


gimme sympathy

by cyborgharpy



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Absent Parents, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Background Relationships, Classic Rock, Emotional Baggage, Everyone is a rock star, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Finn/Rose Tico, Minor Paige Tico/Jessika Pava, Musician Kylo Ren, Musician Rey, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Poor Life Choices, Recreational Drug Use, Rock and Roll, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, The opposite of slowburn, check 1 2 1 2, indie rock, lightsabers are legacy guitars, minor gingerpilot, rock band rivalry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-05-04 19:17:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14599920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyborgharpy/pseuds/cyborgharpy
Summary: The staff of La Resistencia theater has their world upended when shiny corporate industrial metal band Vader rolls into Tucson to play a show at their venue. Stage tech manager Rey finds herself face-to-face with the prodigal son of her personal rock icons and his unflagging ability to ruin everything, including breaking his mother's heart. As their relationship sets off at the speed of sound, Rey finds her voice and an unexpected rivalry that will launch her band, and life, into the spotlight.





	1. down-tuned

**Author's Note:**

>   
> [](https://kayurka.tumblr.com/post/174661317269/gimme-sympathy-by-ashesforfoxes)  
>    
> 
> 
> This story is first and foremost the result of all the love of my amazing beta partner [@enterprisingly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enterprisingly/pseuds/Enterprisingly) and her goading, including the fic title. I wouldn't be writing without her, or my favorites and best friends for eternity [@ohtze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohtze/pseuds/Ohtze) and [@holocroning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/holocroning/pseuds/holocroning). Much love as well to [@bastila-bae](http://bastila-bae.tumblr.com/) for jumping into the fray as a beta for these next chapters and encouraging me to continue this fic. 

 

 

The plan had come together during a Monday post-band practice rummy game. Tucson in May had finally begun to offer warm nights so they played under the covered patio near the pool. Low light threaded through the smoke from Paige and Poe’s cigarettes as they all sipped on Rose’s famous margaritas, the kind with their syrupy top layer of Cointreau. They’d been practicing their set for three hours straight and a drink afterwards always helped loosen that tension. It also helped that none of them had to work tomorrow; the La Resistencia theatre rarely had shows on a weekday. 

“ _You Know Who_ is going to be here Saturday,” Finn says, adding cards to a meld on the stone-top table in front of him. His face is grim, expressive eyes flicking around the group. Finn is always one to laugh and chat, but tonight he’s reserved and it’s clear that this has been weighing on him for days. He’d been robotic in his playing – a living drum machine – and Rey is beginning to understand why. 

“I don’t even want to think about it,” Jessika shakes her head and steals Paige’s cigarette to take a drag, leaning her head to rest on the taller girl’s shoulder. 

“Who?” Rey shuffles distractedly through her hand of cards. They’re all useless. She’s just pulled a Jack of Hearts that has nowhere to go either on the table or amongst the random lower cards in other suits she already has. She discards him immediately, and Finn pulls it without even a hint of his usual humor. 

“Vader.” Rose intones dramatically. 

“Oh,” Rey looks up and makes sympathetic eye contact with Finn. “Your old band.” 

Rose’s hand rises up to rest on Finn’s shoulder, her small fingers rubbing across the fabric of his white hoodie. The table is quiet for a moment. They’d all heard the horror stories that had led their friend away from a professional career to relative obscurity in the Arizona desert, and all of them revolved around his experience with Vader. 

“Their new album is shit,” Rose huffs.

“It’s trash,” Paige agrees.

“Only went gold in a month because of that dumb commercial using their single,” Jessika says. “Sellouts.”

Rey smiles to herself. They’d only been living together for a year but they were all on the same wavelength. Commercial success was anathema in their house, mostly because any dream of them finding it this far from the bright lights and packed houses of LA was next to impossible. None of them really wanted fame, but money and security would have been nice. 

“This is going to be weird, you know,” Poe adds, laying down a run of five spades. “Leia’s going to have a hard time if her asshole kid is in her venue and still isn’t talking to her. I don’t think she’s even seen him since . . .”

“Does she even want to see him?” Rey studies Poe’s face as he takes a long drink, licking salt off his bottom lip. Vader’s frontman is the real unspoken subject of the table – of the whole staff of the theatre, really, considering his mother owns it.

“Hell if I know,” Poe shrugs. “She hasn’t talked about him in years.”

Rey exchanges a knowing look with Rose, who’s tugging at one of the red streaks in her black hair and trying to seem none-the-wiser. Paige glances between them, settling on pulling another card and Jessika snorts into the arm of her jean jacket. 

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Rey chirps, drowning her smile in seltzer water, fresh citrus juice and agave syrup. Rose made the best mocktails, too. For once, she wishes it were a real drink.

Leia _had_ talked about her son – she’d just never talked about him to the boys. They were all sort of the retired rock goddess’ adopted children, but Finn knew Vader personally and Poe was as hot-headed about protecting Leia from her own history as Jessika. She’d only ever opened up to Rey, as far as she knew – and that was because Rey could be counted on in ways very few others could. She was quiet, she wasn’t ever drunk, and she cared deeply for the older woman. She’d never tell Leia that – the heroine worship was still too strong for her having grown up listening to her singles on the radio – but she’d always felt a kinship and gratitude for her that went beyond blood.

It had been a few months since Leia had invited their small group over for a holiday work party at her home in the hills abutting Saguaro National Park. They’d ended up outside near the massive pool, surrounded by a xeriscaped garden of cacti and mesquite trees, stargazing and listening to her tell stories as she unwound from a day of party preparation. Leia was an icon and had years of just being herself – she didn’t even register that the four women sitting around her were locked onto her voice like children hearing a fairy tale for the first time. 

Paige and Jessika had stretched out on a shared lounger while Rose dipped her feet in the heated pool and sipped at her eggnog. Rey sat beside Leia and wheedled story after story out of her with shy jokes about how she thought playing music in the 70s and 80s might have been like, complete with appearances on Saturday Night Live. Inevitably, they’d gotten on the subject of family. She’d never forget the older woman’s eyes as Leia remembered happier times – before the end of her career, the messy divorce, and before losing her child to the lifestyle she’d raised him in. 

Even now, she could feel the lump in her throat forming. Rey had had a family, but they were long gone. She’d wished someone out there looked out into the night as wistfully – she wished someone had kept her childhood picture up in the hallway even if she’d estranged herself years ago. 

“So how are we going to fuck with them?” Jessika says, laying down her last cards to suddenly end the game. Everyone groans as they realize they still have full hands and that adding their cards to her score means she wins by default. “Also you all owe me a shot. And an idea for fucking with Vader.” 

“Hold your horses,” Rose whines, still counting her melds before she throws her unplayed cards down in frustration.

“Finn, c’mon buddy. You’ve got to have some shenanigans you’ve always wanted to pull,” Poe laughs, hands reaching behind his head, pulling his orange tracksuit with white stripes taut against his fit upper body. Poe can’t help but look like he’s flirting with every gesture – which is probably the best thing they could ask for in a front man. 

“No,” Finn shakes his head. “Not gonna mess with those fools ever again.”

“Looks like we’ll have to do it for you,” Paige says, returning from the kitchen with a half-filled bottle of Espolòn and setting it on the table along with a shot glass and plate of limes and salt Rose had used earlier constructing their drinks. “Just like everything else in this house, right ladies?”

Jessika raises her half-empty glass. “Everyone give me an idea, and a shot. Rey, you get a pass on the shot, but your idea had better be twice as good as these drunk fools.”

Rey inclines her head, pulling a small wooden box from her jacket pocket and waving it in her hand, which gets a thumbs up from Jessika. Rose pours the first shot and salutes appropriately.

“The house music before the set starts should be Hanson’s ‘Mmmbop’.” Rose tilts her head back and drinks, slamming the glass back down on the table.

“No, sorry, no – I remember that time in history unlike you toddlers,” Poe says as he grabs the bottle from her on his right and pours his own. He makes a whole show of salting the glass and drinking it, biting into a lime to finish. “Pink and purple lights, only.”

Jessika howls with laughter and snatches the bottle, drinking from it directly even though she has no obligation to. “You wish.”

“Hey now,” Paige intervenes. “Reasonable requests, only.”

“Rose, you still have that old Maker’s bottle?” she asks across the table. Paige pulls a sepia beanie over her shoulder-length, thick, black hair and lights another cigarette.

“Molotov cocktail?” Jessika’s face practically glows as she giggles and pushes the tequila towards the older girl. Paige takes it and sips from the mouth directly, too, cigarette held aloft as she leans down and plants a kiss on Jessika’s full mouth. When she’s done she pushes the almost-empty bottle past Rey to Finn.

“Sure!” Rose chirps, the gears turning behind her large, dark eyes. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Operation Strange Brew,” Paige says, winking slyly. The sisters start laughing hysterically, to the consternation of everyone around them.

Rey glances at Finn again amidst the hilarity, mouth quirking. “Finn, you have any ideas?”

“You’re next anyway, peanut.” He hides a glimpse of bright white teeth behind a brown hand, rubbing his jaw. 

“Hard to top a Molotov Cocktail,” Rey says as she taps a glass cylinder painted to look like a cigarette down into her wooden dug-out’s container of weed. It’s not just any weed, though – this is California CBD, bred from Lawrence Ringo’s own stock according to Maz. She grabs Paige’s lighter and incinerates the one-hitter.

Rey blows out a smoke ring by rolling her tongue and forming her lips into an “oh.”

“Someone should ask him about his mother.”

The whole table erupts into laughter, echoing in the desert night. The nice thing about their shared house, besides the pool, is it’s completely isolated without the possibility of noise complaints or nosy neighbors. The subdivision they live in had long been abandoned by the developers, leaving only their one, half-built McMansion. 

“That can be arranged,” Poe slaps his hands down on the table. “Finn – your turn, friend.”

“Nah, I can’t top that,” Finn pours himself a drink – the last at the table to do so. He wafts the small glass under his nose before turning it to his lips and throwing his head back.

“Why not do a little bit of everything and make the fuckers pay?” He says as the glass rings down. 

 

* * *

 

Rey’s blood is up after being on her feet for six hours, hauling gear out of the back of Vader’s beast of a tour van. Not only had half their road crew quit, the band’s guitar tech had ghosted them in Phoenix. Right now she’s just one of four members of La Resistencia staff equipped to handle the stage set-up and not occupied with other work. The others have already begun to lose their patience with the three members of the band who had finally showed up.

It’s not often that she’s co-opted into road crew for a band she hates – not with Leia around to tell them to rightfully fuck off. But it’s in a special addendum to the tour rider that the mother of the lead singer isn’t allowed within a hundred yards of the band. Ironically she’s in the same building at this very moment, but Rey hadn’t seen her at all since she arrived for her shift.

Rey hadn’t actually cared enough to hate Vader, besides what she knew about them through others. It felt too easy to dig on the shiny, corporate, overproduced industrial metal band just for existing. But then they’d shown up late for sound check missing their bassist and guitarist, and she’d seen the synth player verbally abuse the assistant stage manager, Connix, while she’d given them the run-down on times and specs. Rey’d watched her usually unflappable coworker nearly throw her clipboard in exasperation. She gave Connix a sympathetic grin from where she was bent down to hook up an amp. 

And then there he was, the boy she’d heard so much about. Kylo Ren had stomped past her without a second look before taking up his guitar and giving her enough reason to hate him in just six words:

“Your guitar tech can fucking die.” 

Rey sees red as she watches him twist the tuning pegs – downtuning an already-down-tuned guitar – to try and bring the strings to his standards and ruining her work in an instant. It had taken her a precious half-hour of watching shitty live performance videos and learning the instrument to get it into tune. Lord knew it was time to take the thing in for a decent repair. She might have been able to do better, but there wasn’t enough time in the world to make that stupid thing work right with the shape it was in. 

“Tell that asshole – what’s his name . . . Ray? – he can’t tune a guitar for shit.” He’s speaking to Connix, who’s pointedly not looking at Rey even though her brown eyes are flicking to the right of the stage where she stands. 

Rey can hear him just fine. The cords fall from her hands as she forces herself to leave the stage. She’s going to kill this asshole. And then she’s going to have to explain to her boss why she killed her kid even though she’s pretty sure Leia would understand. Rey beelines for Poe’s soundbooth since he’s the only one who can stop her from punching their main act in the face. He looks bemused as she hides behind the soundboard in the relative darkness of the floor, shaking her fist at the stage. 

The curved auditorium in front of them looks sparkling new despite the age and wear of the century-old building. Tall, red velvet curtains frame stacked equipment and the special lighting and mirrors set-up per tour specs. Everything else is chaos. The two overworked techs, Ezra and Sabine, are continuing to cart in an overabundance of shiny, expensive gear while the three musicians find their places. 

“Where’s the guitar tech?” Vader’s synth player asks from behind a pile of red-and-blue glowing keyboards. Though he’s not so much asking as he is screaming into his dead mic, pulling it towards his face in the hope that he can hear himself if he just tries hard enough. The too-bright stage lights illuminate flecks of spit flying from his mouth. “And where’s my volume you, idiot?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,” Poe mimes like he can’t actually tell what is being said, whether or not they can see him. Rey folds over into her hoodie at his antics, stifling laughter. It helps lessen some of the anger in her chest, but only a little. 

The chatter from their walkies rolls in just a few seconds later.

“Golden boy up there looks like he needs a stiff drink, Rose,” Paige says into her earpiece. Like the rest of La Resistencia staff, she’d obviously snuck a glance at the celebrities who’d shown up.

“The ginger or the Prodigal Son?”

“The ginger,” Poe says, immediately holding down the mic control on his shirt and winking at Rey. 

“Don’t you dare give that dickhead Hux alcohol,” Finn replies.“That guy cannot hold his liquor.”

“Get back to work, children,” Snap’s deep voice comes through the shared channel. “We’ve got a line out here around the block, and I’m pretty sure at least half of them are carrying fake IDs.”

“Bones is fired if one gets through,” Rose shoots back.

“I am _not_ cleaning up the puke,” Finn says pointedly. 

“If they get in, I’m letting them all know where the tour bus is afterwards,” Paige says.

Laughter echoes from the front where the bar resides even after they mute their individual mics. Maz and Rose are behind the antique bar – conveniently raised for their two shortest employees – prepping glasses and drink mixes for what is, thankfully, _not_ an all age’s show. The thought of teenage goth girls sobbing and screaming at their first concert – arms stretched towards Vader’s front man – makes Rey cringe internally.

This whole situation is made worse by the fact that she knows more about the family history of Vader’s front man than her own, really. She would have thought the grandson of Anakin Skywalker and the child of Jedi and Millennium fame would have had better taste than Hot Topic muzak. The thought that someone could have a legacy in the world she’s climbed into tooth and nail, and utterly destroy it, upsets her more than any insult he could throw at her. 

Even through the haze of contempt she can kind of understand the appeal now that she’s seeing him in real life for the first time. He’s built like a small fortress – tall and long-limbed, dressed in a fitted suit jacket and slim black jeans that are the wrong choice for a show in the desert. Even with air conditioning, the theater is old and it tends to get hot when they are at capacity, especially when the lighting tech is pissed off and has set the stage lights to the brightness of small suns.

She watches Poe work as the unmollified drummer begins performing their sound check. It’s hard to tell who the person behind the kitted-out drum set is given the signature white and black mask perched on their face, but they seem calm even as the synth player keeps shouting and gesticulating wildly at the terrified techs from behind his massive Korg.

Poe is relaxed and in his element, too. Rey’s handsome coworker pauses for a moment to listen to the acoustics of the room before turning a few dials and adjusting sliders in incremental amounts. She nods at him with a smile as they both hear the transition from muddy to relatively clear from the drum mics.

“I have an idea,” she yells into his ear. “Tell them you found ‘Ray’.”

Poe’s handsome face breaks into a smile as he adjusts the mic input and leans into his console, eyes flicking up towards the stage. 

“Uhhh, hi. Everything’s under control. Situation normal,” Poe says.

“What happened?” Hux yells back at him from the stage now that he can hear himself on the overheads, red hair plastered over his face. The drummer stops smashing at his cymbals and comically looks out at them with his inexpressive stormtrooper helmet, still kicking away an ominous beat on the bass drum.

“Uh, we had a slight speaker malfunction. But everything's perfectly all right now. We're all fine here, now, thank you.” Poe stands up straighter, even though he’s still angled over the soundboard. “How are you?”

Hux pulls a phone out of his stiff black jacket almost immediately. His mic picks up his outgoing call for the whole building now that his volume is up.

“Hello?” His voice is professional before he hears someone respond on the other end. “Where the fuck is our replacement crew?”

“So our guitar tech will be up in a minute–” Poe’s voice disappears beneath Hux’s continued shouting on the PA.

“No, get Canady on the phone, right now you _waste of space_.”

“. . .” Rey shakes her head at Poe, her eyes locking back on the mighty Kylo Ren looking between the guitar in his hands and his bandmate screaming as if both were entirely new to him.

“ _I_ didn’t fire him. Our ‘supreme leader’ did. What do you mean there’s no flights into Tucson. PHOENIX?! That’s hours away, you fucking imbecile. Great. We don’t have a fucking sound tech for our show in this godforsaken shithole. Snoke is going to-”

“Told you,” Finn says over the channel. A chorus of titters follows, Paige and Rose and Jessika’s voices melding into one.

“They better be paying you extra, Rey,” Rose says over her headset once the laughter subsides. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“Guess I’m just lucky,” Rey smiles to no one. “You still have that special something for someone on the top shelf?”

“Come and get it, girl,” Rose affirms.

Rey pulls her hood down and grabs Poe’s arm to break his attention. She pushes him out of the way as she presses down the control button on the sound board with a smile and speaks in her most posh accent.

“Mr. Solo, your mother called. There’s a gift for you in the green room.” 

The drummer stops drumming, Hux stops screaming into his phone, but neither is as gratifying as seeing the lead singer and guitarist of Vader turn and look around like a frightened animal.

The man on the stage blinks into the full glare, seeking her out even if he can’t see her. 

“Your . . . mom?” The drummer says into his mic and starts laughing uncontrollably, the sound distorted by their mask. They almost fall off their stool, drumsticks raised in approval. 

Kylo Ren immediately throws his guitar down into its stand so violently it topples over into the mess of cords on the stage, storming off backstage. 

More laughter crackles in Rey’s ears. Beside her, Poe’s shoulders shake as he wipes tears from the corners of his eyes. 

All she can think about is the instrument lying neglected on the stage – the one she’d apparently tuned so poorly. Rage spirals up inside of her chest again and she makes her way towards the front of the theater to collect her small token of revenge for the man of the evening.

 

* * *

 

Rey folds her knuckles into her hand a few times, rehearsing what she’ll say. There’s not enough time in the universe to come up with something clever – not when they have show start in two hours and she has so much more work to do.

“Hullo,” she raps the weathered wood a few times, overwhelmed by the sensation that the green room is not the best place to be caught alone with someone she knows pulls women like a magnet. She’s dressed in work clothes: ripped jeans, a well-worn Jedi 1983 shirt, a Resist! hoodie and her hair pulled back into a messy triple-knotted bun. It’s not really the look of a professional stage manager, but it will have to do.

The feeling of being underdressed becomes infinitely worse when he opens up the door shirtless.

“Oh,” Rey says, embarrassed only by her own bodily response. Heat floods her cheeks and she has to actively look away and up at his face to stop from embarrassing herself.

“A gift. For your troubles.” She thrusts the Maker’s Mark bottle in between them, smiling dumbly. _Stupid, stupid,_ she thinks – but it’s hard to think with that expanse of pale skin in front of her nose.

“‘Ray’ says he’s sorry.”

“My mother sent you?” he accuses as he crowds the space between the hallway and his room, looking right and left for any sign of other people. 

Rey swallows slightly, her eyes wandering to the mouth right at forehead level rather than stare at the scar bisecting his well-defined chest and shoulder, wrapping all the way up to cross the right side of his face. His lips are full and pink and his jaw works slightly beneath them as he finally looks down at her. She’s grateful she’s not a teenage goth girl anymore because those dark eyes are doing something that might have had her screaming, too.

“Don’t you have a shirt or something you could put on?” Rey says as she presses the door with her left hand under his arm and looks up. “I need somewhere to put this beast.”

Her thumb jerks behind her, indicating the too-large guitar slung over her shoulder, the strap so long it’s body is bouncing against the back of her knees.

Kylo comes back to life from where he’s been staring over her head, hands out suddenly as if he expected her to drop it. “Give it to me.”

Rey ducks around him, forcing him out of the way by the sheer length of the instrument.

“I couldn’t find your whammy bar,” she says, shrugging the monstrosity off of her back to set it on the faded green couch that takes up most of the small floorspace.

“I don’t have one.”

“Figures.” She surveys the room with its pile of identical black gym bags and the untouched snack trays and complimentary drinks. She’s pretty sure Paige fucked with the food somehow, and is grateful she knows about it because her stomach is growling with hunger and she would have had no problem diving into the carrots and celery otherwise. 

“Where is your useless guitar tech, anyway?” he asks. 

Rey shrugs, glancing at his chest again because _how could she not_. She can’t really discount the fact that he takes up half the room in presence alone. But then all the Solo-Organas seemed to – which probably came as an added bonus of rock star genetics.

“Do you even have a person on lights?”

“Yes. Jessika is great at her job.”

“Sure,” he pulls a towel through his hair and Rey makes herself busy inspecting the stains on the couch in front of her before she sits down in the nearest chair, pulling – no, lugging – the guitar into her lap. It’s a custom-built seven-string monstrosity, much too big and red and black criss-crossed like something from a Van Halen video. The low B and E strings are worn to shit and coated in what looks like dried blood flaking from the tarnished metal. 

She catches a whiff of something that smells like spearmint and eucalyptus in the summer and looks up to see him applying deodorant, his body stretched out in the illuminated mirrors. His dark hair is damp, and his skin is still beaded with moisture that she knows isn’t sweat but can’t help but cue her mind into thinking about him breathless and hunched over on stage . . . 

_Maybe he’ll play shirtless_ , she thinks. _We’d have to call the fire department. An ambulance, at least._

“You took a shower _in there_?” Rey asks, nodding towards the door to the half-bath in the back corner.

“Yes. That’s what it’s there for, right?” he asks, suspiciously.

Rey stifles a laugh, not imagining him fitting into the tiny stall – or poor Finn scrubbing the tile after the last debauchery.

“Just make to sure to get your full STD panel when you get back home,” she focuses on what she came here to do, downtuning the second-lowest string and clipping it with the wire cutters on her multi-tool once the tension is released.

“What are you doing?”

“My job,” Rey refuses to look up, pulling out a handful of envelopes from her leather fanny pack (functional and well-loved but definitely not adding to her confidence). 

She pulls the replacement string from its plastic sleeve, careful not to bend it as it unwinds. Her fingers move quickly as she slides the wire through the bridge, capturing the ball end and pulling it taut against the machineheads before slackening a few inches of wire for the wrap. It doesn’t take her long to coil the string around the peg, stretching it a bit and winding it more once its tight. 

“Your guitar looks like it was built by a child,” she says after a minute of awkward silence. Rey’s eyes flick up to watch him looking at her as if she were unlocking Fort Lewis’ most guarded safe instead of doing what all guitar players know how to do. The squarish whiskey bottle in his hands is turning clockwise and counterclockwise, out of distraction or passivity.

“You should really get this thing checked out,” she continues. “You’ve warped the neck.”

“So you’re ‘Ray’.” His face is unreadable, but there’s a tinge of hard amusement in his voice. There’s also a bit of a crack to his words, and she fights a grin at how silly it is to think of him sitting there putting the pieces together and realizing his mistake.

“With an ‘e’,” she spells it out for him, working on the A string. 

He’s still quiet as he sits down to watch her work. Once she’s clipped the last string tight against the machinehead she begins to tune the guitar – listening closely as her thumb brushes across all the strings at once to find the right chromatic. She has a tuner in her kit, but then where would be the fun in that? She works to find the right pitch – the one she can feel in her bones. 

”Do you play by ear, _Rey with an e_?”

“Yep,” Rey plucks out a note and winds the tuning machine to guide her out of the moment of intimacy conjured up by someone saying her name like _that_. It helps to think of him wishing she were dead on stage. 

The guitar is too big for her but she finishes with an arpeggio, sliding her left hand up and down the long neck with the deftness of practice as her right hand thumbs the strings. She looks up to see him mollified, hunched over in the too-small vanity chair. To add insult to injury she strums the first few bars of her favorite Millennium track: _The Princess and the Scoundrel_. His arm snakes out to grab the guitar at the highest fret, muffling the sound. She’s startled by the action, her mouth going dry at how big his hand is compared to hers over the dark inlay. 

“Ah you do,” he says as his fingers drift over the guitar like he’s caressing a lover. Black hair fans around his face as he looks down, idly plucking each string to call up a perfect note.

She tries to channel murder in her expression despite her heart thudding in her chest. His face is long and sort of uncanny in its attractiveness but it’s those eyes – they’re just as infinitely deep and soulful as his mother’s. Right now they’re looking at her with humor, and . . . something else. 

“You know this was just fine before you decided some ‘asshole’ tuned it for you wrong and overcompensated, right?” Rey snaps.

“Yes,” his mouth is quirked in what could pass for a smile. It’s like a break of sunlight in between a heavy cloud cover. When she realizes he’s staring again she sniffs and ducks her head.

“Ben,” she says, handing him back his instrument and ignoring the light brush of his fingers against hers in the transfer. “Your mom would appreciate it if you’d stop being an asshole.”

“So you _were_ sent by my mother.” The vanity mirror behind him catches the side of his face, and for a second his expression is distant and sort of sad.

“No.” Rey says, shaking her head. “But everyone here loves her. She’s family to us, you know.”

He huffs, propping the guitar up against the chipped linoleum counter beside him to pick up the bottle of Maker’s. 

“This is poisoned, isn’t it?” 

“Would I do that to you?” Feeling bold, she steps into his space, almost brushing his knees. His dark eyes climb up her body. There’s a heat there that could incinerate her, and for some ungodly reason she wants to know what it feels like to stoke it. 

Rey’s fingers close around his hand holding the glass neck and tug the bottle free from his loose grasp. His skin is actually cool to the touch, but not unpleasantly so, and he doesn’t protest as she cracks off the red wax to uncap the bottle and lift it to her lips.

“Only one way to find out,” she says, taking a pull. It’s her first taste of hard alcohol in years and she has to fight to keep from coughing as her eyes water and her throat flares. She manages to hold it together, fixing the most annoyed look on her face she can manage over the involuntary grimace. 

“Try not to let it kill you, Ben.” She sets down the bottle and pulls away. 

He’s still holding her in a gaze that could melt stone. His eyes continue to burn into her on the way out the door, along with her throat and stomach and – 

 

* * *

 

– the street rises up to meet her, amber-tinged vomit splashing against the painted concrete-block wall of the backstage loading area. Rey chokes, eyes streaming as she clutches her chest and empties her stomach into sun-crisped weeds. It’s been a few hours but that one swallow of Strange Brew had been roiling in her belly through each sound check, and the bustle of door opening.

Strange Brew was what Rose called it, but it’s really just the dregs from Maz and Rose’s well mats colored with the cheapest and most noxious whiskey money can buy. Paige and Rose had re-sealed the bottle with a dollar store candle. God forbid the liquor license folks ever found out about _this_ prank. 

Maz is standing outside on a short break now that the concert is underway and the drinks rush has subsided. She hands Rey a spliff, the white paper flaring red on the edges in the dim light.

“It’ll settle your stomach, at least.” Maz doesn’t bat a lash in most circumstances – certainly not when someone is puking behind her bar. 

Rey wipes a film of acid from her lips and grimaces. She makes sure the alley is empty before she takes a very small hit of what she knows to be a combination of American Spirit tobacco and Norcal’s best sativa.

She coughs a little but nothing else comes up out of her, and she breathes in the welcome, chill air of the moonless desert night. Behind them, the sound of cheering seeps through the gaps in the metal door where it’s held just barely open with a brick.

“Han and Leia’s kid has that effect, doesn’t he?” Maz chuckles wryly, puffing deeply. “That boy looks like his grandpa did after the acid took him, you can see it in his eyes.”

“Why does he hate his mother so much?” Rey asks, leaning against the adobe wall of the theater beside the tiny, older woman. Maz shrugs, pushing bottle-thick glasses up her nose and peering into the orange sodium-light that illuminates the loading area. It’s an early show but the sun has already set beyond the Tucson Mountains to the west, the sky losing the last of its blue. 

“Last time I saw Chewie he said they both wrote him out of their wills,” she offers.

“Can’t blame them. What kind of monster writes an entire book about his parent’s sex life and substance abuse, anyway?” Emotion is spilling over into her voice, and she clamps it down; she has work to do. Rey kicks the ground with a scuffed sneaker, waving her hand to decline another offer of the spliff.

“A rich monster with no friends,” Maz says. “But that was his grandpa for you. Runs in the family.”

“You knew him?” 

The small woman gets the glazed-over look she always does when someone asks her about the ‘good old days’, stubbing out the burning bit of paper beneath her orange Croc.

“No one really knew him well besides O.B., but he was a good man. Back before everything. Can’t hear ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ without crying, and the song’s not even about him,” Maz sighs.

Rey nods, unable to speak around the knot in her throat. 

She’s always had a memory of her parents in their junk RV in Slab City, playing _Wish You Were Here_ on vinyl. Her mother had sung along with Waters, one hand holding hers to dance around while the other kept a doctored lemonade from spilling into the shag carpet. Together they’d filled in the harmonies on ‘Part IV’, the trailer park echoing with their “ooooohs” as Dad had fried potatoes and tofu on the tiny propane range outside. He’d only been able to join in on the main bits and the chorus, his voice muffled by the perpetual cigarette in his mouth and the laughter of the other campers posted up in plastic lawn chairs on their astro-turf “lawn”. 

Her eyes swim with tears again and she wipes them away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. 

“I guess I just wish I could have known them, you know,” she says to the few stars blinking into life in the sky above. “I would have killed to have parents, and he had legends.”

“You’re more Leia’s kid than that boy ever will be,” Maz says as her wrinkled, brown fingers settle on Rey’s arm. “Maybe you should go visit her?”

The tiny bartender has the right idea. Their mutual boss has been holed up in the office since well before her son had arrived. If anyone needed comforting right now, it would be her. Rey nods, scrubbing away the last of the dampness from her face.

“Gotta get to work, kid. Finn’s covering and I’m pretty sure the only thing he knows how to make is vodka on the rocks. Stop by before you go see Leia.” 

Maz stretches and leads the way back, pushing the brick holding open the stage door out of the way. The darkness and a roar of sound immediately envelope them both. 

Back when Rey had snuck into shows – with her hair pulled under a hat and a clipboard in her hands to pretend to be crew – she’d spent hours learning the back of similar theaters. Now she can navigate the poorly-lit space as if it were her bedroom. The side stairs and front of house beckon, but the music draws her like a moth to a streetlight. She rolls neon green ear plugs thin before inserting them into her ears, moving towards the edge of the stage to stand behind the monitors. 

Vader is just finishing a song: one of their more angsty, screechy numbers. It’s ending with a breakdown between the bassist and the rhythm guitarist, Kylo fixed on the stage between them and bridging the gaps in their playing. The two women couldn’t be more diametrically opposed. Rey finds herself standing only a few yards behind a giant, pale-as-death woman with a platinum half-shave and red suit, taller than anyone in the band even as she’s hunched over her enormous, silver bass. Across the stage a shorter black woman with streaks of white in her full, dark hair jams down on a custom Goldtop Les Paul.

Finn had told her all about the blond bassist, Phasma, with her overbearing persona and cold, military-like efficiency. But Rey had heard of Rae Sloane long before she’d ever really listened to Vader. Granted it was hard not to admire someone who shared her name and career choice, but it wasn’t just her unflagging ability to deal with her bandmates’ tantrums that made the older woman impressive. She’d been playing professionally for close to thirty years, largely unsung due to systemic bullshit. It didn’t help that Sloane was quiet and emotionless in interviews. Rey suspected it came from dealing with dumb questions about her experience, the kind that treated her like an oddity rather than focusing on her hard work and talent. 

Industry rumor was that Sloane was the foundation on which Vader’s current success rested and that she’d been brought in by twitchy record execs at the First Order to lend them an air of credentialism and improve their sound. Even though the guitarist had seemed to be dialing it in on their latest album, her live performance has Rey mesmerized. There’s a strategy to Rae’s playing that can only be seen. She’s careful and efficient with each power chord, not sparing a glance to their lead as her head bobs and she bends her knee-high black boot in time.

Finn hadn’t ever played with Sloane as far as Rey knew. He’d quit Vader mid-tour after their second album, long before she’d been brought in to clean up their act. But besides their mess of a synth player and losing someone as talented as Finn there’s really only one other reason this band needed a clean-up job. He’s currently singing in a baritone, arm raised in an emotional moment to bring the crowd into a peal of screams. Kylo turns to the side to activate an effect on his pedalboard, his eyes flicking up.

The idiot actually breaks his playing when he sees her standing just past Phasma and the amps. It’s only a moment, unreadable in the sea of noise, but Rey hears him stumble just as his foot stamps down on the correct pedal. He pulls back to close out the song. His dark hair is damp with sweat now, falling around his ears in limp coils as he plays. Rey’s heard this song before – she thinks its called “Silencer”. She’d watched their newest experimental music video with its famous actress and overwrought CGI in her research, and it had only made her more prepared to dislike the show.

Despite her lack of appreciation for the genre she can’t help but think that he might, actually, be good. They all are – even Hux, who’s working multiple consoles and keyboards in sync. But it’s clear Kylo is the linchpin. He’s got the finger-length for more complex playing and he doesn’t hold back when he gets into a groove. Rey thinks it a shame all of their songs are so over-produced. Vader only really shines live: when they have the freedom to play past songs they’ve played a thousand times before with a rawer, fiercer energy. 

The song dies out to a crescendo of shouts and whistles, punctuated by the high-pitched whoops Rey would have let out if she were in the crowd (for Sloane, of course). The low rumble of a full house takes its place as there’s a break in the set. Kylo crosses the stage to confront the angry synth player in his nest of expensive keyboards. Hux presents the image of professional musician but this close Rey can see the hatred in the man’s clenched jaw as he’s forced out to make way for Kylo. He disappears into the shadows of the far left stage and Sloane’s head pivots to follow his exit, her expression unreadable. 

Obviously this is a change from normal, because the lights don’t catch up until after Kylo’s adjusted the mic for his height and begun to play. Jessika _is_ good at her job, proving it by calling up cool, blue lighting for an underwater effect as the shimmering white lowlights meet the fading residue of the smoke machine. It’s perfect slow-song atmosphere. Even if there’s one in every show, Vader is barely through the first third of their act and something feels . . . off to Rey. 

Kylo is playing a sort of melancholy blues piano riff – at odds with their other work and the set. She’d always envied decent guitar players who could switch mid-show to piano seamlessly as if gifts in one translated to the other. Ben doesn’t play half as well as someone like Matthew Bellamy, but he has the emotion and phrasing that only years of lessons and practice can instill. Of course the rich kid of pro musicians would have taken piano lessons.

That _frisson_ Rey always gets for a good song – the one that makes the hair on her arms stand up and her skin prickle – washes over her long before the others begin to play. The drummer finds his own snake-like repeating rhythm to compliment a song it’s clear he’s unused to, while Phasma works between the subdued beat with a hypnotic bassline and Rae’s own improvisational chords.

The music comes together just as Ben’s piano intro shifts into a haunting melody. 

And then Rey isn’t so much seeing or hearing what they’re playing as _feeling_ it. Because this is a song she hasn’t heard in years – an old friend reaching across time and space to pull her back by the hand.

_The devil’s beating his wife_

_Sun weeping for us both_

_Shadows in the corner and a splinter in my head_

_What is broken can never be put back together again_

When his vocals begin again, the words form on her speechless lips, escaping under her breath in time. Unconsciously she finds herself clutching her arms, fighting not to sway to the music with the rest of the audience. Small flames flicker to life beyond the stage as lighters are raised up from the throngs of people crowding the metal barriers and the stage lights shift to purple, than red. Ben’s vocal mic picks up the pure sound of the keyboard in front of him, and his too-deep voice.

_Snow falls in a dark room_

_Bound by circumstance, or chance_

_Voices calling through the years_

_Bringing us two steps closer to the past_

She’s fourteen again, by herself in a tiny room in London, headphones tight against her ears as she follows along on her battered gray Epiphone. The guitar, un-amplified and tinny, chimes under her stumbling fingers while she sings low enough she won’t wake her foster father asleep down the hallway. The song had never been officially released – just available on a Myspace page that had been abandoned long before that medium had died. She’d played it over, and over again – writing down the chords in gel pen that smeared when her tears fell on the page.

The bridge brings her back to reality, crashing through with rising instrumentals and a resonance that she can feel in her bones. Ben has returned to his guitar from the synths, and the sound is more than familiar because it’s the one she’d spent countless nights trying to figure out with only her ears and her emotions as a guide. His head is bent as he plays, each gesture known but different than she’d imagined. Her heart feels like its in her mouth and she knows she should go before she starts crying again. 

Phasma has backed herself into the corner near the drumset, riffing over the third chorus and leaving a straight path between them. Ben is constantly looking up and out, but he turns back to face where she’s hidden behind the red velvet curtain. He lets the guitar fall to pull the mic towards him. Suddenly they’re the only people left in this space. They are intimately, awfully alone in a too-crowded room.

_Let it die_

_Let them live_

_Tell me a better story_

_Tell me that a different world exists_

The song is coming to a close, but the moment stretches into infinity. It isn’t the music, or the golden glow that permeates the room as Jessika dims the gels to allow the natural color of the stage lights to come through. It’s a pair of pretty eyes and a weakness in her knees, and the horror of realizing she’s vulnerable to all of this in a way she’d scoffed at earlier. She’s always been an exposed nerve when she plays, but this is different. 

It terrifies her.

_And when I close my eyes I see_

_Between the false moon and the ocean_

_Across the stars and the spaces in-between_

_You are waiting for me_

He has the grace to look down as he sings the last words over relative silence, the rest of the band pulling back.The spell isn’t broken. He lifts his hand from the last chord, upturned in a gesture of inviting – or offering – towards the right side of the stage. When his eyes lock on her again, gravity sinks her deep into the center of the earth. He’s smiling – just barely – and then it all falls into place, turning her blood to icewater. 

Even if he couldn’t have known to play this song for her, he _had_ played it for her. 

_He had played it for her._

Rey turns and runs from the stage just as the entire La Resistencia theater – silent for a held moment – erupts into applause. The memory of his face falling is now tethered to the long-forgotten song repeating in her head.


	2. crossfaded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most perfect guitar in the world gets an afterparty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who has been so responsive and encouraging to what is my first, real fic. I owe you everything, and you're my reason for writing. 
> 
> My eternal writing and podcasting partner [Ohtze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohtze) swept in with last minute edits and saved my posting schedule--give her a huge high five (and read "The Doe"--it's sexy as fuck). Credit also to [Enterprisingly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enterprisingly) for RPing out an _almost_ fight between Vader and Black Squadron. We'll see how things continue to progress. . .

Rey doesn’t bother to knock as she opens the door of the upstairs office, her hand slipping on the glass in her hand, the other wrapped around the mail. The drink is fizzing like crazy, and the lime has managed to stay perched on the rim as she ducks her head and walks in to find D’acy and Leia behind their respective desks. Beebee gets up from her bed at Leia’s feet, the dog’s small, mottled brown and white body threading between her legs.

“Oh, let me help you with that,” D’acy says as she stands up from her chair near the door and takes the loose stack of envelopes. The bird-like woman has a halo of blonde ringlets that bounce as she bows out of Rey’s way. Leia looks up briefly from a similar pile on her desk. There’s just the memory of a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke fading under the illumination of the lamp perched on the corner of the giant wooden desk. Rey smiles to herself–Leia has always hidden her embarrassing vaping habit, so tonight she must be especially on edge. There’s a downturn to her face that tells Rey she’s disappointed in who had come up the stairs, all quick-stepped rather than plodding and heavy like a certain _someone_.

“This is from Maz,” Rey offers, holding out the glass for Leia, who takes it with fingers heavy with turquoise rings.

“Liberating Cuba one drink at a time,” Leia says before she takes a sip and winks at Rey. “There’s leftover Moon Dragon over there. No meat since we killed the beef and broccoli. Eat up, kid.”

Rey falls on the takeout boxes like a small tornado, grabbing a pair of chopsticks to stuff lukewarm Lo Mein and pineapple fried rice into her mouth. The oddly-shaped carrot slices and baby corn are a small comfort as she sits down in the chair across from Leia’s desk. 

The room is full of magic–packed much more tightly than the open hallways of the General’s house in the west hills. One wall is entirely filled with framed albums in platinum and gold, the other is all pictures of a slight, brown-haired women laughing and smiling with the best musical acts of several eras. Rey’s been in the office plenty but she’s never spent enough time looking at any of the photos. Maybe out of fear, or just insecurity. She’s sure she could spend a day picking out the grainy faces: Neil Young, Eric Clapton–and what she suspects is Art Garfunkel based on height alone. Each picture looks like it belongs in a museum behind a double-pane of glass with a white, printed title card that said “Leia Organa pictured with (insert famous person here) - credit to (insert famous photographer here).”

To Rey, she’s not just a rock musician but the General. Poe had given Leia the nickname long before she’d restored the early 20th century _La Resistencia_ theatre into a practical music venue with the best equipment and staff. She’d eschewed a board of investors and had funded everything herself, right down to the craftsmen and contractors who knew adobe and framing as well as she knew Spanish. For every musical act they’d had in the renovated space she’d hosted a community event, giving back to the town her adoptive father had grown up in long before his time as a California senator.

“I don’t think he’s coming,” Rey says, her appetite leaving her just as suddenly as she says the words.

“Oh, I know,” Leia laughs, gesturing over her shoulder. “It’s a fact of the universe Ben can’t be in the same room as his father.” 

She says it in jest, obviously, but Rey’s eyes land on the framed poster of Han and Chewie posed in front of an alien red-and-yellow landscape with guitar and drumsticks held high. Even though they’d been divorced for years, she still spoke of him with love and praise. Rey only has brief memories of Han, tall and awkward as he navigated the house Leia had found without him. Last she’d heard he’s back in Laurel Canyon–running a recording studio with his hirsute best friend.

“I don’t think he’s ‘Ben’ anymore,” she says–regretting it as soon as the words leave her mouth. “He was upset when I said you wanted to talk.”

Leia doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest, her hands sifting through paperwork and invoices with a pair of tinted reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. 

“I’m sorry you had to meet him.” When the General looks up, it’s with wry consolation.

“I’m not sorry,” Rey answers with a similar smile. “He seems to be genuinely terrified of you.”

“Well, that’s good enough for me.” Leia sighs as she presses short fingers to her temples, where her graying brown hair is pulled back into a braid wrapped across her head. “I’ll admit I hoped he’d at least drop by.” 

Beebee whines at her sneakers until she reaches down to pet her mostly-hairless head. Poe said she was a mutt but Leia thought she was a Xolo, and had taken to her enough that she lived at her house mostly, enjoying the life of luxury. Whatever breed Poe’s dog is, she’s unique: all long limbs and smooth, piebald skin. Her one orange eye regards Rey with an intelligence that always make her wonder if the mutt knows something she doesn’t.

“I maybe tried to get him to drop by,” Rey says.

“Not your job, kid.” Leia laughs, cauterizing the moment in an instant. “I don’t think I could handle it, anyway.”

Rey looks at her sympathetically, but Leia shows no sign of breaking down. 

“Speaking of, I’ve got something for you. D’acy?”

“Yes, ma’am?” The other woman’s mop of curly hair comes up immediately from the aging desktop computer in front of her. “Oh, yes.” 

She turns and hoists a large case from where it’s resting against the plaster wall next to her desk. It’s silver and mid-century era, all clean lines and chrome detailing. Rey rushes to her feet to help the smaller woman lift it onto the table in the room, shoving aside white Chinese take-out boxes and plastic-wrapped fortune cookies. Rey’s breathing hitches as she flips open the catches on the side, revealing a gold velvet interior and the treasure nestled inside of it. She may as well have released a flock of doves by opening the damn thing–the moment is that heavenly.

The first thing she sees is vintage Daphne Blue paint, chipped down to a white underlayer in places where it’s been scratched and well-used. There’s a rosewood fingerboard, aged almost black with time; the faceplate is pearlescent ivory with white triple-pickups and controls. It’s not just a guitar. It’s _the_ guitar. 

This is Anakin Skywalker’s 1957 Stratocaster, built by Leo Fender himself. Turning it over Rey finds new, bright silver screws in the backplate. It’s been restored and whoever has worked on it had taken the care to polish the finish with wax until it shone. 

“This can’t be real,” Rey says, but her body is moving of its own volition. She lifts the guitar with both hands, marveling at the weight and feel of a living part of history. It’s surprisingly light, practically floating in her grasp.

“Take it. It’s yours,” Leia says nonchalantly beside her. Rey nearly drops the guitar in surprise, looking down at the General.

“This belongs in a museum,” her voice is high-pitched and tinny in her ears. “I can’t possibly take this.”

“It needs to be played,” Leia’s ringed hand comes to rest on Rey’s right forearm, where her hand is curved around the smooth body. “I just got it back from Truetone. It might look like a fossil, but it can still sing.”

The words are clearly a joke on Leia’s behalf, but Rey can barely register it. She feels herself choking back tears for the umpteenth time that day, placing the guitar back in its case as if it were a dandelion clock she wanted to keep intact, rather than picking each tuft to make a wish for something or someone. And still, there’s lead in her stomach at the thought that it wasn’t meant for her–not really. 

Leia must have been holding out hope for a reunion, and giving it to Rey is just the consolation prize.

“I can’t,” she whispers. “It doesn’t belong to me. I’m . . . I’m no–”

“If I can’t give it to my son, it belongs with someone who’ll appreciate it,” Leia acknowledges the unspoken thing, and Rey feels the weight in her chest lessen, just slightly.

I can’t think of a better person to have it.” An arm wraps around her at the elbows, bringing her into a hug. She’s enveloped in a thick, brown Pendleton sweater that smells like peach vape and Coca-Cola. “Just promise me you’ll play the shit out of this thing. It’s been waiting for someone to take care of it ever since Luke decided country music was his calling.”

She sniffles, relaxing beneath the comforting embrace of her friend. “Well, I’ve needed a new guitar. Just didn’t think it would be one that shared a stage with Elvis.” There’s a moment of silence before Leia claps her on the back with a chuckle. Even D’acy joins in on their laughter, chasing away any awkwardness.

“Thank you,” Rey hugs Leia back, finally, hands gripping both her shoulders as she rests her chin on the smaller woman’s head. “This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever given me.”

“You’ve earned it. I couldn’t ask for a better second-in-command,” Leia says once she’s pulled back, lips taut in a sad smile. “Now get back to work so you can get out of here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Rey ducks her head in a mock salute, latching the case closed and taking the handle to pick it up as carefully as possible. 

She’s at the door when she remembers. 

“Poe wanted me to tell you Black Squadron is playing for the first time tonight,” she says, brightly. “Just for the staff, but . . .”

“I’m glad to hear,” Leia offers, raising her drink from behind her desk before taking a sip. “Knock ‘em dead, kid.”

Rey slips out, the smile on her face stretching so wide she thinks it can never go away.

  


* * *

  


“Well, this is a disaster.” 

Paige flicks ash at the sight in front of them: there’s a crowd of people around Vader’s tour bus milling about and looking aimless. It’s not fans, though. The flashing yellow lights of a tow truck cycle across the band’s tour manager, Peavey, who is in a tense conversation with the tour bus driver and what appears to be a road repair crew kicking at a line of flat tires.

“Whoever it was slashed multiple tires,” Connix says, shaking her head in disbelief and further loosening blonde hair from her twin buns. “No way they’re getting them all replaced tonight.”

“It’s their last show of the tour, anyway,” Paige offers. “The band went back to their hotel.”

“Where are they staying?” Rey asks, looking at her watch. It’s close to 11:15 pm and everyone has been working their ass off to get the venue cleaned and closed so they can fuck off to the afterparty. She does not have any energy left in her body for another Vader crisis. 

“Starr Pass,” Connix says with an edge of disdain. It’s the kind of resort with a golf course sucking up all the precious water in the region for retirees and tourists to pretend they’re not actually in the desert. While none of the Squad can afford to stay at a Marriott they’d gone a time or two to sneak into the pool in their best sandals and pretend like they could. Needless to say, she thinks, it’s a nice place. 

“Well, we can deal with this in the morning,” Rey says to her. “Tell him we can look at the security footage tomorrow. If he asks why it’s tomorrow, tell him Leia has the key to the office and we’re closed on Sunday.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Connix giggles. “See you at the Squad House.”

“After midnight,” Paige reminds her. “And remember, entry for guests is a bottle.”

Connix winks over her shoulder even as she heads towards the group of men with an authoritative spring in her step.

They head back inside to oversee closing procedures, swooping in on Rose once she’s counted down the tills and locked away everything in the safe. The girls pile into Rey’s gray Westfalia and head home, talking excitedly about the show they’re going to put on in their house–their first ever in a year of playing together. 

The Squad had spent most of the week preparing in advance–staying up late Thursday to give an extra polish to their home’s interior and repair some of the jenky doors to their rooms so they’d actually stay shut if they needed them to. Everything is ready for the influx of people that always accompanies a late-night party at their place in the middle of nowhere. Most of the staff of La Resistencia are creatures of the night–desert rats, all–and won’t start rolling in until well after midnight.

The first thing Rey does when she gets home is haul in her new prize from the van. The girls had been so eager for the party they hadn’t even noticed the silver monstrosity behind the bench seat. She holds the case tight to her chest in the overly paranoid fear that it will tumble open to send the guitar skidding across the red dirt of their unfinished driveway, and breathes a sigh of relief once it’s settled into the freshly-washed green floral duvet on her bed. 

Rey sneaks looks at it while she gets ready, first lighting candles and incense as if to bless the offering but mostly just to clear the air and her dizzy head. Her room is clean for the first time in weeks and her bed is the perfect altar, surrounded by shelves of potted plants and her framed posters. There’s only a little bit of irony some of them are for shows the Skywalker guitar was played at. 

She showers quickly, changing into an outfit that she hopes is appropriate for a house party but also her first performance, _ever_. She’s been playing by herself and with friends her entire life, but this is something new. The nervousness of finally performing in front of strangers has been a tense hum in her skeleton for as long as the Squad had first talked of taking the plunge. Even with weeks of planning and rehearsal she can’t believe she’s here . . . or that the guitar on her bed will be the weapon she takes with her into battle. 

Finn crashes into her room while she’s applying a thick layer of eyeliner, popping up over her shoulder in the reflection of the mirror perched on her dresser. He’s dressed casually despite the women in the house spending at least an hour on their hair and makeup in anticipation of photos and late-night celebrations.

“Looking good, rock star.” He whistles and Rey nearly draws a raccoon eye around her lower lashes when she threatens to kick him on his way into the room. Her friend halts in his tracks as soon as he sees what’s lying on her bed.

“ . . . what is _that_?” Finn asks, pointing. 

“Leia gave it to me,” Rey says without closing her mouth, keeping her jaw slack as she touches up her mascara.

“That’s not what I think it is,” he says.

“It is,” she flashes a smile at him in the mirror. “And I’m gonna play it tonight.”

“That’s Luke Skywalker’s guitar.” Finn whistles, taking a long drink of whatever is in the red Solo cup in his hand. 

“Anakin Skywalker’s, actually,” Rey corrects. 

Her friend nearly chokes, spraying liquid across his hand.

“Rey! We could sell that and buy a house,” Finn shouts.

“Sell what?” Rose invades her room, fighting the flips in her hair as she ties up a high ponytail with a length of ribbon. She looks perfect in tight-fitting crimson and black, and she swipes Finn’s drink from him with a playful kiss on his jaw. Her cheeks are already rosy from pre-gaming but her face lights up even further when she sees what they’re talking about. 

“Holy _fucking_ hell, Rey!” 

Rose doesn’t share Finn’s hesitation as she rushes to pick up the blue guitar. Rey holds her breath as she watches someone else roll the neck and body in their hands, but Rose is the most practiced in the house–she knows how to handle any instrument with ease and care, including this one. “Did Leia give this to you? Maz told me she’d seen it but . . . I thought–”

“Yes,” Rey cuts her off. “I had no idea she was planning on giving it to me.”

Again she feels a twinge of sadness knowing she’s the runner-up recipient–but it just makes her more steely in her resolve to treat it well. 

Both Rose and Finn look at her, registering very different expressions as they come to the same realization she had earlier. 

“Leia loves you, girl,” Finn shrugs. “You’ve earned it.”

“Paige, Jessika! Get your asses in here!” Rose shouts, and Paige’s high heels clack on the tile as she joins them from across the house.

Soon Rey has a small crowd in the small floorspace around her bed, Jessika jumping up and down excitedly as she marvels at the guitar in Rose’s hands. Poe comes downstairs and gives her a wry smile from the doorway when he sees what all the fuss is about. He hangs back even when Rose offers him the neck of the guitar. Rey saves him by taking back her instrument.

“Get out of here, you all. We’ve got people coming any second,” Rey barks. They protest only for a moment before remembering that they’ve still got things to do–Rose rushing out of the room to put heavy, thumping R&B on the stereo, and Jessika heading to the kitchen to finalize whatever Jungle Juice she’d whipped up this time. Finn pats Rey on the head before he goes–the last to leave. 

“You’re going to blow them all away tonight,” he says. “And I mean it, you deserve that guitar.”

Rey smiles shyly. She doesn’t believe him, but she pretends to all the same. Rey has never been good with attention, much less celebration for something she doesn’t feel is really hers. All she wants in that moment is time to get used to her new guitar’s weight and feel and sound before she takes the plunge. It feels strange to think of plugging it into the shitty amp already set-up with the rest of their equipment in their small living room. 

_This guitar deserves a stage_ , she thinks, as she settles it in her lap over her star-patterned leggings. She’d left her hair half-down and the damp, brown waves brush her cheeks as she tests its mettle. The guitar is primed and perfectly in tune–immaculate despite its age. She doesn’t need to open the backplate to know it’s been re-wired internally with a humbucker to give it a richer, chunkier sound–the “Fat Strat”, as they called it.

The only thing she finds herself needing to work with is the strap. It’s a beautiful piece of vintage black-and-white leather and embroidered canvas, but it’s extra-long and set to carry the instrument on a much bigger person. She replaces it with the worn strap from her flat gray Ibanez, the guitar looking like a pigeon next to some rare tropical bird where it lies on the bed beside the Fender. 

The sound of foreign laughter and loud voices drift down the first-floor hallway and after a few minutes in meditative silence Rey finally puts the instrument down. The guitar seems to still vibrate even in the quiet, the freshly-played notes matching the airy and light anxiety filling her body. It takes an effort to break away, and she closes the door behind her, wishing she could lock it from the outside.

  


* * *

  


They’re both scrunched up in the back of a luxury SUV, knees bent into their ribs, but Phasma is cooly assessing her phone screen while Ben is cowering like a beaten dog as he peers out at the dark, desert night passing them by. They’d given Hux the front seat–siccing him on the Uber driver as much as putting space between them all so he didn’t decide to punch one of them or puke all over their laps, or both. Hux is in the delirious stage of drinking where he’s talking a mile-a-minute, changing subjects but always coming back to the same thing.

“They fucked with us.” Hux manages to articulate the consonants as he looks back at them over the center console. The ginger’s breath is so aerated a lit match would probably engulf the interior of the vehicle in flame. Ben had come back to the green room from their encore to find the Maker’s bottle empty by a third–smelling just as foul as ever but now hanging over the keyboard player like a cloud. Hux has assuaged his anger about Ben’s last-minute inclusion of “Let The Past Die” in their structured set by tearing through the green room until the next set, and Ben had given him space until a drunken barb about his family had sent him fuming out to finish the show.

If Hux had been angry at him, it had been transferred to Peavey when he’d gone out back to smoke and found the tour bus resting on the ground like a cat with its arms tucked beneath it– giant wheels flush to the gravel. He hadn’t shut up about it since, not even when Rae had made them all pretend to have their shit together in the hotel bar and Ben had drowned his memories of the long day in real Maker’s.

“All day they fucked with us. I found a dead cockroach in my travel bag. How do you think a dead cockroach got in there, exactly?” 

Phasma doesn’t look up from her phone as Hux yells, the driver shooting a look of pure misery back at them in the rearview mirror. 

“How do we even know it was one of the venue staff?” she asks dryly. 

“It has to be one of those assholes,” Ben says, fanning the fire. “One of them will probably be there.”

She shoots him a look, blue eyes made colder by the phone screen illuminating her face. They both know there’s another reason they’re all in a car heading to the middle of nowhere, but Phasma would never say it aloud. Not with Hux drunk and raring to fight. 

“At least there’s a party to go to, aren’t you glad I got that number from the bun girl?” Nine-Two-Six says behind them, his hands coming up to encircle his bandmates’ shoulders around each side of their headrests. They hadn’t called him by his real name since he’d joined the band months ago, not after the series of replacement drummers they’d been through since Finn. 

“A house party,” Phasma intones, voice flat. “You have impeccable taste.”

“Better than hanging out with old people by the pool.” The mask distorts his voice, but it’s clear Nines is happy as a kid–which is fitting considering he’s in the back seat. “It’s vacation time, Phas.”

“You call me Phas again and I will tell Rae you called her old,” she says icily. “Get your hand off of me.”

Nines scurries back, effectively silenced, and they all spend the rest of the too-long car ride in tense silence over muted Top 40 radio. Hux hiccups as he taps madly at his phone in the front seat, sending emails to First Order Records staff now that it’s an indecent hour to call them directly.

Ben keeps his eyes locked out the window while a queasy sort of anticipation builds in his stomach. He has no fucking clue what he is doing, and though the sensation of being out of his mind is second nature nowadays he can’t help but wonder how he got here. There’s an easy answer: a white face framed in golden light and shadow, her eyes full of tears. But he can’t think too heavily on that, not when he knows he’s crashing down on her world again for the third time that evening.

Their car pulls off an empty avenue marked only by orange lights half-a-mile apart in the darkness. Fresh pavement streets wind through scrub and arroyos without a single building on either side until they come upon the particle-board corpses of houses in what can only be an abandoned subdivision. There’s lights floating in the desert somewhere past the dark buildings, coming into view as they pass more complete but still unfinished homes with empty eyes for windows. 

And then they come to the one occupied place for what looks like miles. A line of cars begins half a block away from their destination, with the usual retinue of smokers with drinks in their hands huddling outside the house. The two-story monstrosity is all stucco walls, bad angles, and cheap tile roof. It even has a two-story entrance with faux-Grecian columns and a heavy wooden door. There’s only the barest of landscaping: squat barrel cacti and thorntrees with strings of Christmas lights hung haphazardly to reveal plastic flamingos, garden gnomes, and a giant plastic deer placed beneath. The house is the ugliest thing he has ever seen, and Phasma’s muffled snort affirms his thinking. 

If he thought the house could be any more tacky, that’s when Ben sees a familiar silver 80’s Vanagon in the driveway, parked next to a black Camaro with orange detailing. The light is low but there’s the unmistakable shape of the mural on the old Volkswagen's side: a phoenix tracing flames around a wizard with a glowing blue staff held high. 

He nearly asks the driver to turn around and take him right back across town to the Marriott. He could have another whiskey or two in the hotel bar and forget all of this had happened–as he’d tried to do earlier.

“Hey, asshole,” Hux yells through the open car window after slamming the passenger door closed. The indeterminate buzz of music played on shitty speakers and filtered through walls and windows drifts in with his words. “Are you coming, or not?”

Ben doesn’t say anything, opening the door to unfold his body from the too-small seat. The smokers turn and immediately their heads duck in closer to each other–probably because Phasma is walking past them in heels that make her taller than any man in the county, including himself. She’s wearing a silver dress that hikes up over her pale, muscular thighs and he’s sure she could kill a man with the look on her face even if he can’t see it from here. 

“Thanks, dude,” Nines is bumping fists with their patient Uber driver right before the SUV peels away into the street. Out here the sounds of the highway are so distant only the party makes noise–and its in the absence of it all that he realizes the music has a familiar unpredictability. 

There’s a live band playing inside. If he didn’t know it in that instant its immediately followed by cheers and whistles as whoever was playing finishes their song. That all-to-familiar sound is a siren’s call as Phasma opens the door. With the song is over, the party is abuzz and a throng of people exit the house to block the entrance, hands reaching for lighters and smokes, their voices just a little too loud thanks to the hearing damage inflicted on them moments before. 

Nines chases Phasma in, but is caught like a fly in honey by the smokers as they recognize and react to the signature white mask. Ben can’t imagine wearing one for that long, contractual obligation or not–but then he’s never had difficulty being recognized. 

Eyes meet his in the darkness and the overflow from the party separates around him like skin cut with a sharp knife. He doesn’t veer right to follow Hux and Phasma into the golden glow emanating from the kitchen to the right–instead he turns and finds a place against the wall near the foyer and take cover beside a giant bookshelf. He pretends to care about what is happening in the living room, or rather, what would have been a living room if a real family lived there. 

Tall bay windows, covered by abstract-patterned blackout drapes, frame the bump-out in the room. Every square foot of the unused space is packed with band and gear. There’s Finn, lit by a cerulean floor light behind a modest drum set. Their dark-haired bassist has her orange and white guitar slung against her hips as she drinks a Tecate and talks to a woman sitting on the edge of a sagging, threadbare couch against the wall. Across the stage is a weird mixture of instruments: a banjo,a lap steel, a vintage organ, and a small table of what looks to be handmade synths and drum machines. Amidst the mess is a tiny girl lifting a violin to her chin and rubbing the bow against it experimentally. 

Ben’s eyes settle on the man at the lead mic, with his sunburst-finished 70’s Telecaster. _Fuck_ , he thinks. That’s why the name Poe had seemed familiar earlier when he’d heard it; he’d grown up with this kid. The _kid_ is actually a few years his senior–another child of his mother’s retinue of collaborators. It’d been decades since they’d last spoken but memories of playing tag-football with a dark-eyed boy who always was the first to rush headlong into trouble come crashing back. He should have known his mother would hire Kes and Shara’s kid considering how often they’d been at their house growing up.

He’s jostled as the party shifts back into the room to crowd the too-small space, beckoned by Finn kicking his bass drum to signal the start of a new song. Poe is fixated on his guitar and an improvised pedal board made out of a ratty suitcase, tuning and completely oblivious to the enemy in his midst. 

That’s when he sees her.

Her back is turned to him, and to the room, and the blunt edges of her haircut grace shoulders made of porcelain and sinew. One capped sleeve of her creamy gauze dress is pinned beneath a guitar strap. He waits for her to turn with a held breath, willing it. That face had been shimmering just under the surface of his thoughts all day, distorted by memory into something that transcended the real, human being in front of him.

He immediately regrets wishing he had. He regrets coming to this party–he regrets ever seeing her eyes look up at him in a crowded theatre and holding him through the chaos and gloom.

His grandfather’s guitar is in her hands, and she’s holding it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Not holding it–no–he realizes she’s going to play it, and simultaneously understands it’s her instrument now. Under the flare of dismay in his breastbone is a heat in his face and ears as he realizes how perfect it looks framed against her slender body and beneath her careful hands. 

The plaintive cry of the violin cuts through the air, taking up the room. The girl playing improvises for a few measures, cutting across the small instrument with an expert touch. The room goes silent, cut through by each resounding note before the drums and Poe’s guitar kicks in along with his vocals. 

Whatever the song is it’s obviously an old favorite by the cheers and voices in the room joining in. The odd sight of a crowd of what look to be punks and metalheads singing along to a twangy country ballad isn’t enough to distract him from Rey bobbing her head with the slowed-down time signature.

_I got me a shack at the bottom of the road_

_Fixing cars and giving tows_

_I spend all my money_

_On the lottery_

The whole house packs into the living room long before she plays–keyed up by the song or just the novelty of a live band. The people around him at least give him a wide space, intimidated by his size or his brooding–it doesn’t matter, as long as it works. When Rey joins she doesn’t just fill in on the simple song Poe’s leading. There’s a slide on her left index finger and the guitar is practically singing as her hand moves up and down the fretboard. 

He has never heard anyone play this guitar–at least not in his living memory. But it is utterly hers in that moment. Her right hand is a gentle blur as she plays, eyes passing over her bandmates as she makes a simple song sound like art.

Finally, she moves towards the mic to duet with Poe. Her voice is soft, but assured and clear, ringing above the dozens of others even as her fingers coax life into the guitar strings.

_When the end comes to this old world_

_The righteous will cry and the rest will curl up_

_God won't take the time_

_To sort your ashes from mine_

_Cause we zig and zag between good and bad_

_Stumble and fall on right and wrong_

_Cause the tumbling dice and the luck of the draw_

_Just leads us on_

She stops singing to play under and over the violin in an undercurrent of music that makes a perfect conjoining of the two instruments. The room hushes as the two women’s unique sounds merge together over the rest of the band, the acoustics overpowering a space never designed to handle them. The song ends in earnest, with the laughter of the violinist and Rey’s wide grin to match as they finish together.

Her eyes dance in the dark, floating over the crowd only to finally settle on him. White shows around Rey’s huge hazel eyes, her expression cycling through shock to fear to anger, and finally to impassivity even as she continues to play and the band completes one last bar in unison.

_Cause when I win the lottery_

_The righteous will shake their heads and say_

_That God is good, but surely works in mysterious ways_

_When I win the lottery_

He’s out of the room well before the people echoing the lyrics with their off-key colorations break out into cheers instead. He passes Nines with his new retinue of devoted fans, moving through the crowded kitchen and past Phasma buried in a corner with her phone ignoring gawkers. Hux is just outside the kitchen doors standing beside the pool with a cigarette between his lips and he ignores him, too. 

Ben heads deep into the partially-fenced backyard, towards candles flickering in the black space away from everything and everyone. 

  


* * *

  


Earlier that day she’d thought of all the things she could have said, letting them bubble up only to evaporate just as quickly. Now is no different, except the words come out in a rush. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demands.

Those wide, jacketed shoulders don’t turn to face her and so she’s left burying the daggers of her stare into his back.

“What’s this?” Ben asks after a few seconds. He’s kneeling down in front of a poorly-constructed little structure made of wood covered in stone and mud and mosaic tiles. Saint candles illuminate a variety of knick-knacks and dozens of dusty frames with sun-faded photographs.

“It’s an _ofrenda_ ,” Rey can’t believe she’s answering him. “You know, an altar for those who’ve… passed on.”

“For a horse?” He pokes at one of the pictures.

“That’s Pepper.” She really can’t believe she’s letting him change the subject. “Rose did barrel racing. Why are you here?”

She drifts beside him to better see what he’s looking at, fingers tight on the cider she’d grabbed on her way out the door. It’s a rare occasion when she drinks but the sight of him looming in her living room had prompted her to grab it, much worse than the anxiety she’d felt prior to playing. She’s still riding the energy from the set, feeling like she’s finally come up for air after years of solitude, and she can’t let him ruin it.

“Are you here because of the bus? None of us had anything to do with that,” she says, stare locked on his candle-lit profile and roving dark eyes. She can tell he’s been drinking by the slight sway in his crouched position.

He still doesn’t look at her, or answer her question. “Is this your parents?”

“Yes. They died a long time ago.” The shock of him finding it quickly wears away when she remembers no one on the altar looks remotely like her besides the two long-haired kids in the aging photo. Jessika’s mom is from Singapore and very much alive but Paige and Rose’s Vietnamese parents are there, as well as Finn’s father and a whole slew of dated photos of their respective grandparents. Their mixed family shares a space with Poe’s previous dogs–all seven of them–and various horses, cats, birds, and the one very adorable tortoise who’d been Jessika’s pet before he’d run away one night. He was probably still alive, somewhere, but Jessika kept his picture around to remind herself not to lose track of anything.

“They were musicians, too?” Ben’s long fingers brush the glass of the frame, smearing the layer of dust that’s settled on it. 

The sun-faded picture is hard to make out in the dark but it’s etched in her memory–its their wedding picture, after all. Her dad is holding an acoustic guitar and her mother has a tambourine and peonies in her long, straight hair. They’d been hippies until the end, even if they’d taken that picture just about the same time the radio had been taken over by Mother Love Bone and Screaming Trees. They’d been relics of a different time, but it hadn’t saved them from the same entropy that had stolen a generation in the early ‘90s. 

“Groupies. Burnouts,” Rey sighs, eyeing the full, clear bottle in her hand. “They were nobody.”

“You’re lucky they were nobody,” he says after a beat.

“Lucky?!” Rey’s anger is a firework combusting, sending sparks across her vision. “At least you have parents, you absolute tosser.”

He stands up, face bleaching almost gray with fear. It’s obvious the words had slipped out without a second thought, aided by whatever he’d been drinking, and that he’d regretted them instantly, but she keeps on going.

“Maybe you’d appreciate yours if they’d been dead since before you could talk,” she spits. 

“Please–no–I’m sorry. I just meant . . . at least they weren’t famous,” he says sheepishly, running his hand through his hair and cringing. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying.”

It’s such a sudden change in tone and his posture that she can’t find satisfaction in continuing to yell at him. Rey slumps down on the little wooden bench they’d set up beside the makeshift _ofrenda_ , pouring out some of her drink on the dry ground. The bench slats creak as he joins her.

“To the dead,” he observes, softly. 

“To the living,” she answers, bringing the bottle to her lips and swallowing cold sweetness, fighting the aftertaste. At least it steels her nerves. “If you’re not here about the bus, why _are_ you here?”

It takes almost a minute for him to respond, again with the nervous fidgeting of his hands like he’s trying to summon a magic portal out of their shared space.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” 

“Try me.”

“I wanted to see you.” 

His honesty hits her harder than anything else. She nearly bolts from the bench, frozen instead as she takes in the expressionless side of his face. 

“You don’t know me,” Rey snaps back.

“No, I don’t.” Ben turns to her, eyes deep as a well. “But I’d like to.”

He doesn’t say it smoothly or flirtatiously he’s just… intense. That intensity rolls off of him in waves as she tries to recalibrate her brain to bite back. The fluttering in her chest wins over instead. Maybe she’s just exhausted after one of the longest days of her life, but her stomach is twisting into knots at the thought of him being interested in her–and they’re the good kind, if there is such a thing.

“No. No. No.” Rey shakes her head. “I know all about you. I’m not playing this game. You’re not on tour anymore and I have no interest in–” She doesn’t have to finish–his mouth has already twisted into a closed-mouth, resigned smile. 

“You know everything about me?” he asks.

“Enough.”

“I see.” His body stiffens, hands tented between his knees. 

Rey is surprised to feel shame welling up in her at the fact that he looks genuinely sad. But she really doesn’t have the capacity to comfort him or own up to following his career before they’d even met. Instead she reaches into her worn leather jacket and pulls out a joint, lighting it before raising it to her lips. She stops, offering it to him in consolation.

“Don’t be dramatic, _Ben_ ,” Rey says, softly. “You’re at a party.”

He doesn’t argue, fingers avoiding touching hers as he takes it, coughing like an amateur when he exhales. She has to stop herself from placing a hand on his shoulder or back–giving him her cider instead so he can wet his throat.

“I’m not good at parties,” he admits when he can finally breathe. “I can go if I’m making you uncomfor–.”

“Don’t,” Rey interrupts him as she finally relaxes against the back of the small seat and closer to his body. “I’m not uncomfortable.”

He visibly relaxes beside her.

“I still want to know why you’re here, besides . . . me.” Her tongue is three sizes too big in her mouth when she says it, drinking deeper. _Me. Let him get to know me, he’ll be running then._ “Your band, that is.”

She extinguishes the joint in the condensation on the side of her bottle after taking a few puffs, feeling her limbs finally slip free of the tension they’d been carrying all day. 

“We’re all a little stir-crazy,” he says. “Being on tour for months tends to make you want to kill each other.”

 

“Are they really that bad?” She scoffs. Rey can’t imagine that kind of animosity between her roommates-cum-bandmates. Maybe she wants to scream sometimes when Jessika doesn’t clean out the lint trap or Poe leaves his underwear on the stairs–but she has five other people to share this strange life with. She has a family, as odd as they are.

“You work long enough with people, they end up knowing too much about you.” He rubs his temples. “And they only remember the bad things.”

“At least you play well together. Musically,” Rey adds quickly.

“If you think so.” Ben’s hand comes down between them, splayed against the splintering wood. If she wasn’t sure she’s feeling particularly self-conscious thanks to the weed, she’d be wondering if he was trying to grab the fabric of her dress between his fingers. 

“You’re tight at least. Sloane seems cool,” Rey can’t bring herself to say her own name aloud, so settles on the other. 

“She’s good,” Ben says. “Too good.”

“She’s slumming it with you,” Rey jokes.

“No,” he says seriously. “She’s got her own agenda. But she is talented.”

He exhales heavily, making her pause. There’s something unsaid in his words that’s carried his eyes to the sky. His beauty-marked cheek twitches and settles as he finds the stars past the haze that hangs over the valley when there’s no wind, as it has tonight. 

“I’m going to regret saying this, but I’m glad you came,” she says.

“You are?” Ben turns to her, incredulous, a smile quirking his full mouth. 

“You’re a good reminder that we won’t get paid to play or tour anytime soon, and I wouldn’t fucking want that stress, anyway.”

“That’s a load of horseshit,” he replies with a low chuckle. The sound is startling until she remembers she just got him high. “You’re good. As much as I hate country, you’re good.”

“We’re not country,” Rey cringes, even though her face is a traitor and she’s smiling to herself. She adds, ”just don’t tell Rose that.”

“What are you, then?” Ben asks, looking down at her. Even sitting he’s too tall. Her eyes are at his collarbone and it forces her chin up at an awkward angle. She’s reminded of being face-to-face with the shirtless version of him earlier, which makes her giggle. 

She prefers his nakedness, because at least then she’d have an excuse to stare at his body rather than free-falling into eyes so dark they may as well be black holes in the candlelight. He’s so close she can feel the warmth radiating off him in waves, and she fights the urge to lift her hand and brush a strand of hair from his forehead. They stay locked in each other’s gaze for what seems like forever–just a little too long even in the slowed-down time to be unintentional.

“Didn’t you hear any of our other songs?” Rey changes the subject, breaking the hypnotic stare to sip her drink and look out at the dark alien landscape of the desert at night.

“Just the last.” Ben shakes his head as if to clear it. “The one about the lottery.”

“It’s a cover, you know,” she murmurs. “One of Poe’s dad’s favorites. Not really our usual sound.” 

“Are you playing anymore tonight?” She glances up at him to see he’s still staring. He purses his lips as he swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. 

“I don’t think so,” Rey shrugs. “It’s too packed in there and everyone is getting lit. I should go check on them, actually. Maybe you can check on your band, too, don’t you think?” 

She stands up, dusting off her dress. More than anything she wants to leave now before she says anything she regrets, because all the unsaid things and thoughts from earlier keep bubbling to the surface now that she’s had the chance to unwind. 

_You have no idea how well I know you, and I shouldn’t exist to you,_ she thinks. _And you’re still not off my shitlist._

“Would you play for me?” 

Rey’s breath catches in her throat as their eyes meet again, before it releases in a harsh laugh. 

“You can ask the rest of the band but I’d serious–” she gestures behind her, cut short by him standing up and enveloping her space even further. He hesitates at the bench, as halting as if he were asking her to a school dance rather than crashing her house party just for the moment to talk. 

“Not the band, just you.” 

Again, he’s sincere. And intense. He’s sort-of smiling, like he can’t hold back whatever flicker of joy exists buried deep beneath his usual mask of seriousness now that he’s relaxed and alone.

Rey opens and closes her mouth, feeling as ridiculous-looking as a goldfish being fed.

“I _really_ don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says.

“I’m not asking to get in your pants, Rey,” Ben says, resigned. Another brush of panic flickers across his face as he watches her, reading her response and growing more bold. 

“That was my guitar, you know.”

It’s so petulant she can’t help but laugh again. 

“Why don’t you play it for me, then?” she asks. 

Rather than look horrified, his expression is almost pleased. It makes her mouth go dry as cotton, her hands tearing the label from the bottle in her hands. 

“Somewhere alo–” he begins saying before the shouts of partygoers behind them escalate into a “whoop” and a huge splash. 

That can only mean one thing: someone’s in the pool. It’s too cold out for it and they hadn’t even bothered to clean it the whole winter, so either someone wanted to swim or . . . 

Rey immediately turns and hightails it for the house, the grip of her short Docs crunching in the silty yellow soil. He’s not far behind her, taking the opportunity of them moving together to place a hand at the small of her back to steady her as she descends down the dark, boulder-strewn pathway. 

The scene as they close in on the edge of the brick of the backyard is one of complete chaos. Finn has Rose around the middle, her hands beating at his arms as she threatens to jump in after the dark, sodden figure flailing in the water. The unlucky swimmer is trying to grab the arms of Vader’s drummer. A crowd has formed outside, laughing and jeering at the scene–calling for a fight even as Phasma snaps a photo of her bandmate being dragged from the pool with her phone.

Poe pushes through to take charge and help bring a sputtering and splashing Hux onto the dry stone lip of the poolside. 

“What the hell is going on here?” Poe yells, looking back at Rose and Finn.

“He called her . . . I’m not repeating it,” Finn offers, looking up at Rey. He lets his raging girlfriend go as shock expands across his face at seeing the tall figure just over her shoulder. 

“What the fuck are you doing here, anyway?” Finn asks, voice dangerously low.

“She _fucking_ bit me!” Hux shouts, cradling his hand absently as water sluices off his drenched clothing to pool at his feet. 

“Do we have a problem here?” Poe’s face is grim but he’s not asking Hux. Like Finn, his line of sight is over Rey’s shoulder.

“No,” Ben answers. She can’t see his face but his voice is cold.

“We just wanted to drop by and say ‘hello’,” Nines raises his hand in surrender. “Kaydel invited me.”

“ _What the fuck_ –someone at your shithole venue slashed our tour bus t-t-tires!” Hux’s teeth are chattering now that the cold has set into his sodden clothing, but he looks like he’s about to go nuclear on Finn, who’s moved between Rose and his ex-bandmate.

“And you think _we_ did _that_?” Jessika drawls, crunching the aluminum can in her grip. 

“You weren’t exactly the most welcoming earlier,” Phasma says, stepping forward to tower over them all. Rey nearly chokes as she watches Jessika look up with her mouth open, obviously starstruck but readying for a fight all the same.

“Oh fuck–my phone!” Hux wails.

Their audience breaks out into laughter and scandalized “oohs”, the pale-white Hux going green as he pulls the dead rectangle from his pocket. Poe snatches it from his shaking grasp before he can push the power button.

“Your girlfriend owes me a phone, Finn!” Hux shouts and moves towards him, but Poe intervenes again and places a hand into his wet jacket, his other patting the taller man’s shoulder with the dead glass screen.

 

“Let’s get you dried off, buddy,” Poe offers. “Paige–can you grab a towel, please?” 

Moans follow from the people outside as he leads their drowned guest towards the house, shooting a look back at Rey and her unasked-for shadow. Rose gives Hux an exaggerated lean-in and snap with her teeth as he passes by, making him scurry faster into the kitchen. Jessika and Paige laugh until they cry, patting the smaller girl on the head even as Finn stares pointedly at Ben. Rey turns her head to see he’s wearing a completely neutral expression, besides the hint of a grin at the corner of his mouth. 

Fight avoided, the partygoers drift back into the house still talking about it. The white-masked drummer steps in to clap a hand on Finn’s shoulder and greet him like an old friend, while Jessika introduces herself to Phasma, who promptly shows her something on her phone which sends her into further hysterics.

“You want to help him?” Rey finally turns back to look at Ben. The look of relief on his long, hound-like face sends a nervous electricity through her core. 

“I’m sure he deserved it,” he shrugs, eyes alight in the ghostly green underlight from the pool. “Are all your parties so exciting?” 

She shakes her head.

“You have no idea,” she says. “C’mon, Solo. Let me get you a drink.”

  


* * *

  


Everything that follows is a blur. He lets her keep him trapped in the kitchen, in the corner furthest away from the large island with it’s makeshift bar and bowl of nauseatingly-pink punch. She leans into him to talk over the noise of the party, unknowingly creating a needed barrier between him and the prying eyes of everyone who enters and leaves the kitchen. He recognizes many of the partygoers from earlier in the day and by the looks of surprise and standoffishness, they recognize him too.

Rey is full of joy, her British accent emerging when she shouts across the room at the other guests, at him. When it becomes clear they’re never going to have a conversation over the drinking game unfolding on the counter involving playing cards and some kind of betting system, she leads him down a dark hallway. It takes a few seconds for his racing mind to catch up, dimmed by the one hit he’d accidentally inhaled too hard, earlier. The effects are only getting worse as time goes on, causing nervous paranoia to curl up in the back of his mind, settling in at the worst possible time. 

Just as suddenly they’re cloistered in her room. The closing of the door behind him initiates a spinning in his vision that tells him he should stop now–while he’s ahead of the curve. But he takes another swallow from the glass out of nervousness: mostly ice and water with a few splashes of the nice scotch she’d poured on top of it. He should have known a house party with a bartender in residence would have a decent selection. He sits down heavily, grateful for the solid surface to hang onto. 

“This is yours,” Rey says as she tosses an unfamiliar loop of fabric in his lap. He catches the guitar strap just barely, his left thumb sliding across the weave of well-worn embroidery. 

“I’ve never seen it before in my life,” he says. He’s watching her lift up his guitar from it’s stand. _Her_ guitar. “That, though . . . “

She seems reluctant to give it up from where its pressed to the front of her flowy, white dress, but practically tosses it at him once she’s taken away his glass. 

“Show me what you’ve got,” she challenges as she plugs the trailing cord into an Orange Micro preamp on top of a tan-faced cabinet the color of a California poppy. She dials the knobs in so the familiar hum carries over the murmur of the party just outside the door. 

He brushes the strings, grateful for the distraction from the intimacy of being alone in such a small space with her, again. Her room smells like Nag Champa and floral perfume, and whatever fragrance the candles lit amidst her plants is burning into the enclosed space. It’s a cluttered little habitat, but orderly and singularly _hers_.

“What do you want me to play?”

She laughs at him again, bright and real. The mattress indents a bit as she sits beside him, untangling the cord coiled at his feet. 

“It’s your funeral,” she says. Her eyes are warm in the peachy light as they settle on his hands and the guitar. Something sparks in his mind, prompted by the dozens of vintage posters covering her walls.

The simple chords sound a bit peculiar on the ringing, clear instrument, and even more so not having anyone to back him up when the song breaks into its own. But he can see the corner of her mouth turn up in approval in his peripheral vision. He can’t tell her he’s playing it because he wants to hear her sing–and he can’t force her to–but he prays all the same. 

_The sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind_

_Just another mad mad day on the road_

_I am just living to be lying by your side_

_But I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road_

In the break she flicks him a look, humming along even though she knows the words. He plays through the second chorus, nudging her shoulder with his elbow and relishing the way she leans back in towards him as she finally can’t resist singing along with him.

_Oh I'm sleeping under strange strange skies_

_Just another mad mad day on the road_

_My dreams a fading down the railway line_

_I'm just about a moonlight mile down the road_

She loses her voice again after the second chorus, hands rising to meet her face.

“I’m tired. sister, and I’m dreaming . . . I’m running down your moonlight mile,” he says the lines more than he can conjure up the emotion to sing them, trying at least to distract her with the familiar guitar solo sans piano or strings. Her shoulders are shaking and he can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying.

“You had to play that song of all the songs in the world,” she says between her fingers, rubbing at the streaks in her eyeliner when she finally lets her hands fall. 

“A song for a song,” he says, handing off the guitar to her. She smiles at him, almost gratefully.

The room had stopped rotating around him as he’d played, but it seems to have been temporary. He lies back on the bed with his feet still firmly planted on the floor, torso barely fitting on the mattress horizontally, and stares at the ceiling. Her body and the neck of his guitar merge into one, a dark profile against the white.

“You sure you’re not up for another?” she teases. 

“I’d rather hear you play,” he slurs. The mattress is creaky but comfortable. 

“Any requests?”

“Just don’t make me cry.” The words tumble out just as the warning bells in his brain go off– _you fucking moron_ , he thinks.

“God, sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”

Her frame tightens as she looks down over her left shoulder at him. He can’t see her expression, so his hand rises to her arm to lightly rest on her freckled skin, fingertips brushing sun-bleached down and the softest skin he’s ever felt in his life. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and though she’s silent her right hand at least comes to rest on his for a moment, the pick she’s holding digging into his knuckles.

When Rey plays he can’t tell the song at first–and he knows instinctively it’s because she adds her own flavor to everything she plays. It’s not until she starts singing that the melody resolves and the song turns into a hammer colliding with his rib-cage, squeezing all the air from his lungs and making his heart twist.

_Brillante como el espejo alumbra la luna,_

_Su resplandor debil como la brasa_

_Cuando la luna es brillante igual que el espejo, toma el tiempo para recordar_

She sounds practically angelic but all he can hear is his mother’s voice, singing him to sleep as her hand rests on his sweat-drenched forehead, expelling yet another night terror away. He’d been very young, then, but not stupid enough to know that his parents’ shouting matches had as much to do with him as their failing relationship. Moments alone with her like that had been a small comfort–the only one he’d ever really wanted growing up.

He’s faded enough to just shut up and take his punishment, but his eyes clamp tightly closed, his arm coming to rest on his face. It’s partially to stop the light from throbbing beneath his eyelids, but also to wick away the tears leaking from them. There’s a knot in his throat that only loosens when he relaxes into the lullaby, feeling like he’s sinking into the depths with only Rey’s voice to tether him to all of creation.

_Resplandeciente brilla la luna, mientras el fuego muere en sus brasas_

_Aquellos que has amado siguen contigo aun_

_La luna te ayudara a recordar_

The song is never ending as sleep takes him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song played at the afterparty is [Camper Van Beethoven's "When I Win The Lottery"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH4kMZABAjA). You won't find it on Spotify because David Lowry is against artists not getting the royalties they're due (can't blame him). 1989's Key Lime Pie is one of my favorite albums ever written. Give it a shot, along with everything else by Camper and Cracker. 
> 
> Ben plays [The Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PXOHpBneEU) because its about being on the road, and far from home, and because Rey's room is full of The Rolling Stones posters.
> 
> Leia's lullaby is from [Claudia Grey's "Bloodline"](https://www.amazon.com/Bloodline-Star-Wars-Claudia-Gray/dp/1101885262) and is a traditional Alderaanian lullaby (despite the fact that Alderaan only had a moon for a few minutes :( ). The Organas will always be space-Latinx, and so are also in this modern AU. I have to give huge thanks to [@nipuni](http://nipuni.tumblr.com/) and [@bensoloshotfirst](http://bensoloshotfirst.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for answering [my request for "Moonbright" to be translated in Spanish](http://ashesforfoxes.tumblr.com/post/173983203006/bensoloshotfirst-ashesforfoxes-i-know), because it is so much more beautiful and poignant in Spanish and much more meaningful in the context of my fic. All my love to you.


	3. fly by night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A breakfast adventure into Heaven disguised as Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, this would not be possible without people who have been kind enough to love and support my work. I'm tired so I apologize for not properly recc-ing everyone but I owe [@ohtze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohtze/pseuds/Ohtze) as always for coming in with last minute edits and the kind of support asshole introverts such as myself can only dream of. Thank you for the comments, the laughs, and the headcanons. I appreciate every single one.

Sunlight finds its way in through his eyelashes, needling his brain. His mouth is as thick and dry as if someone had poured plaster into it. But it’s the foreign sensation of a room that’s not his own that sends him rocketing into consciousness, along with the warm frame pressed into his hip.

He’s acutely aware of being fully clothed besides his shoes and jacket, still on top of the sheets. There’s a body curled up beside him—almost off the bed for how closely she’s tucked to the side. Ben reaches to pull her to safety before stopping himself, cognizant that touching this strange, beautiful girl he’d met yesterday when she’s sleeping is the absolute last thing he should be doing. He compromises by shifting towards the wall to give her space, hoping she’ll find her way on her own. 

What feels like an hour passes as he watches her breathe, the light streaming in through the plants on her window. Each touch of the sun scatters over the side of her face, breaking into shadow where it touches her nose, her lips. She’d stopped snoring when he’d moved, coming enough out of sleep to roll back a bit so he can watch her purple-tinged eyelids flutter.

He’s at an impasse. He needs to get up, but he doesn’t want to startle her. 

“Rey,” he whispers, but she doesn’t seem to hear. After a minute he experimentally nudges her bare shoulder with a fingertip. It takes a few pokes until she finally swats at him with a hand, groaning. She practically jumps when her hand makes contact, blinking at him a few times.

“Oh, you,” she rubs her eyes, shifting the duvet over her. “I forgot you were here.”

“Did I pass out?” He already knows the answer but he can’t help but ask, cringing as he says it.

“Yes, remarkably.” She laughs—exposing a wide, white smile. “You were dead weight. I had to get Finn and Rose to help me move you. You’re lucky Rose is stronger than she looks.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, almost at a loss for words out of embarrassment. “You should have woken me up.”

“You were absolutely gone,” she says, one eye closed against the light, her nose scrunched up. “I don’t think I would have let you smoke if I knew you were _that_ drunk.”

“I’m rusty,” he lies. It’s easier than explaining the little white dot of a pill that inevitably brings him down. Ben pulls the hair out of his eyes, lamenting the fact that it's disheveled from sleeping in the same position for hours. “Did you at least get some shut-eye?”

“Yes. You missed the dance party. And Poe’s jacuzzi tub overflowing, and Nines’ drum solo at four in the morning.” Rey smiles impishly. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?”

“I’ve heard.” No one had slept this close to him in almost a decade; it’s not something he’ll forget soon. “Did I say anything horrible?” He can’t put it past himself to put his own foot in his mouth even in his sleep.

“It was a bit hard to make out,” she says after a moment, a flicker of something passing over her otherwise-cheerful expression. “Bacon?”

“Please don’t tell me I said that.” That’s when he smells it—wafting through the air. His mouth waters, relieving some of the dryness. 

“Is this a bed and breakfast?” he asks.

“Only when there’s a house party,” she yawns. “Your band stayed here tonight. Well, everyone except Nines. I guess he left with Kaydel. Phasma took the couch.”

“Lucky him,” he says. But Ben doesn’t really think Nines is lucky—not when he’d ended up waking up next to Rey. The thought must be written all over his face, because her smile changes to something unsure.

“I’m sorry for taking your bed,” he says, sitting up to stretch his aching, heavy limbs. His bare feet are practically dangling off the bed, and he has the flash in his mind’s eye of her pulling his boots off, along with his socks. The thought makes him want to crawl under the bed and die.

“It’s fine,” she says as she stretches out beside him and pushes the covers off of her, exposing an Iron Maiden tank top and more skin than he’s seen of hers since they’d met. His face goes hot as he looks away.

“I guess I wasn’t too much of an asshole last night, then?” He hopes—he always hopes.

“I wouldn’t have slept in the same bed with an asshole,” she shoots back. “Do you not remember?”

“No, I do. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t dreaming that you played me a song when I asked you to.”

“I owe you another one, if we’re keeping track,” she says, playfully.

Confusion floods his static-filled brain as he turns to look down at her. She’s got an expression halfway between amusement and uncertainty, but he’s more focused on how much green is in her eyes, plucked out by the light and the emerald-and-yellow bed cover. 

“Oh,” he says after a moment. He remembers her startled face from the shadows of the stage—the swift exit as they’d made eye contact across the dark space. “That.”

“Only a weirdo would sing a song for a girl he just met.”

“Can’t deny it.” He turns away to rub his face between his hands, clearing the last of the sleep from it, but mostly hiding the redness in his cheeks. There’s a soft tug on his t-shirt and he finds she’s grabbed the fabric with her hand, her bottom lip between her teeth as she looks up at him through her lashes. 

“I liked it,” she says, softly. 

He’s speechless, leaning back into her grasp. 

“Can I tell you a secret?” she asks like she’s sure he won’t say ‘no’, expression coy. He has no idea what kind of demon has possessed his body that motivates him to lie back down, resting his head on a crooked elbow buried in the pillows beside her. 

“Sure.” He’s staring at her mouth still, overwhelmed beyond reason to lean forward, even if it would take him a hundred years to get up the nerve to do so. She moves for him, nose nudging his cheek and his hand before her lips brush against his jawline to whisper: 

“The tips of your ears turn red when you’re being shy.”

There’s a beat before he pulls back to collapse on the bed, sighing heavily. Now it’s her turn to look down at him, resting her head in her hand. Her hair has been pulled back into a high bun but stray pieces fall across her face, chestnut in the light. 

“Are you alright?” she giggles. _God help him_.

“No,” he admits.

“I can tell,” she says—gently flicking his earlobe with a finger. “It’s cute.”

“Well at least you think I’m cute.” If anyone could hear them he’s sure they’d puke from the sheer adolescence of this conversation. He wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s her turn to be embarrassed, her cheeks coloring pink beneath her freckles. If his heart was racing before its stuttering now. He’s pretty sure he woke up in an alternate universe, where things actually went his way.

“You have no clue,” she says, dipping her face to press a kiss to his nose. The casual intimacy of it steals all the oxygen from his body, maybe even the room.

“Let’s get breakfast,” she says cheerily. It’s as if nothing had happened, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to do, and he’s incapable of wrapping his mind around it. His body folds into the beaten-down mattress and ceases to exist. 

“Good idea,” he chokes out a few moments later—aware that his skin where her mouth had touched is going to burst into flame. “Just give me a minute.”

Collecting himself proves infinitely more difficult when she gets out of bed, revealing tiny sleep shorts and tan legs. He pulls a pillow over his head and moans into it as she laughs and shuts the door behind her. 

* * *

There’s a melody in her heart, but the smile fades from Rey’s face as she walks down the hallway and her solipsism breaks. The aroma of food cooking in the next room is a good reminder the world isn’t just the two of them. Being alone with him seems to be some kind of intoxicant; she’s acting on impulse whenever the opportunity presents itself. She’ll have time to dwell on it later, but for now— for now she really doesn’t want to think too hard about it. Not on a lazy, beautiful Sunday. Rey doesn’t have to work until Tuesday night, and the only thing she really needs to do is extricate the stranger from her bed with his number in her phone. 

_And maybe a kiss goodbye._ Her rational mind screams at her to kill the butterflies in her stomach, but they keep reawakening everytime she thinks of his hands on her guitar, her arm.

Paige is dressed in a gold, floral silk robe as she glides across the kitchen, placing down pans and cracking eggs. She hardly looks at Rey except to load up a plate of indigo-stained pancakes where they’re warming in the oven, sliding it across the granite counter-top. Rey helps shift aside a small army of empty red cups, cans, and half-filled bottles of stale beer to make a place for it.

“Have fun last night?” Paige’s tone isn’t mocking, but she’s definitely feeling sly as her dark eyes dance over Rey’s hair and clothing. 

“You could have put a teacup of water between us and we wouldn’t have gotten wet,” Rey says between stuffing in mouthfuls of blueberry pancakes doused with butter and syrup. She only has the faintest sense that she should wait for Ben, but she’s never held back for hunger. 

“What’s this about getting wet?” Jessika is right behind her, and Rey almost asphyxiates mid-swallow. “Don’t tell me you didn’t climb that tree like a squirrel.” 

“ _He was passed out_ ,” Rey says once she’s able to breathe. “Seriously, Jessika?”

“He’s not half-so-bad when he’s not being a raging prick,” Jessika shrugs, snatching bacon from the plate beside Paige’s griddle. “You could just gag him.” 

Paige swats at her with a spatula, warning her away from eating everything in sight.

“That smells great, Pai-Pai,” Rose is yawning and stretching in an oversized shirt—one of Finn’s by the looks of it—as she enters by way of the stairs. She rolls into a barstool and rests her head in her hands, obviously feeling the night’s effects more than the others. 

“Is he a good kisser at least?” Jessika asks, wiggling her eyebrows maniacally.

“Oooh,” Rose is suddenly alert as if she’d mainlined the coffee Paige set in front of her. “Did he kiss you?”

“Dear god, I did _not. Do. Anything._ ” Rey nearly puts her face in her sticky plate to hide it.

“Poor Rey. Gets the hottest piece of strange at the party in her room and is the only one who didn’t get laid,” Jessika shakes her head in mock woe.

“That tall drink of water didn’t either, for all your trying,” Paige sips from her mug, eyes going to the side of the room.

“Hey, I resent that remark,” Jessika says. “I am a one-woman-woman.”

There’s a happy moment of silence between them as they settle into their morning routine—Rose burying herself in her elbows and Rey looking for a place to crawl under as Paige and Jessika take domain over their kitchen. 

“Where is Phasma, anyway?” Rose asks disdainfully. “I didn’t see her in the living room.”

“I think she called an Uber around dawn,” Paige shrugs. 

“I don’t know how she managed to fit on that couch. She looked like an accordian,” Jessika adds.

“Wait a minute…” Something dawns across Rose’s face, like she’s solved a complex equation. “That means…”

Her eyes shift upwards to the ceiling and she groans. 

“Yep,” Jessika laughs and Paige joins her, a little more modestly. “How did you not hear with your room up there?”

“Oh, no.” Rose makes a face. “Oh dear god, no. Does everyone in this house have bad taste—besides me and Finn? And Rey. Rey, you get a pass since you kept it Christian.”

Rey is thinking about a stolen peck on a lovely nose and the not even _remotely_ puritan thoughts that had been brewing in her mind as she’d watched him sleep. To her credit, it had been a very long time since she’d been next to anyone, even just to share a bed. The last few times had been even more disappointing than the first. But if Ben Solo was handsome when his face was animated, it had morphed into something dangerously innocent and beautiful when he was dreaming. 

“Sleeping with our boss’s fuck-up son is still— _ooph!_ ” Jessika suddenly is clutching her side and coughing as Paige elbows her in time for the footsteps in the hallway to reach their peak and Ben to show up in the entrance, clearing his throat. The four women all stare at him, stifling various stages of horror and amusement.

“Morning, I’m Rose,” Rose overcompensates, reaching out with a flat palm. He stares at it before awkwardly reaching out, brushing past Rey in the process. She watches in wonder as his palm swallows Rose’s, and Rose’s eyes go just as round as hers feel.

“Have some food,” Paige offers him an earthenware plate loaded with half of the bacon and the roundest pancakes.

“Have some coffee,” Jessika thrusts a full mug—the biggest they own—in his other hand, still snorting back laughter. “Cream or sugar? Oh wait, let me guess, you like it black.”

“ . . . Umm. Yes.” Ben swallows, looking at Rey as if she can save him from the torture of being under the scrutiny of her housemates. “Thanks.”

“It’s a lovely morning, let’s eat outside,” Rey says brightly, grabbing the plate Paige has been constructing for Jessika along with forks and syrup. Paige winks at her. 

“Enjoy,” Jessika drawls as Rey shuts the door behind her just a little too hard.

Outside, the sun has yet to fully begin cooking the landscape. Citrus trees—sadly no longer blooming this late in spring—shade the covered patio. She takes her place where the sun touches the far end of the table, opposite his place furthest from it. She basks in the warmth, letting it smooth the gooseflesh from her arms and warm her chipped-paint toes, their dulled sparkle brilliant in the early morning light.

They sit in relative quiet, punctuated only by Rey hiding a grin when she sees Jessika through the window above the sink washing dishes and making faces, including holding a chef’s knife and making the “eyes on you” motion with her other hand. 

“You’re not eating.” He motions with a butter knife, in a comical contrast to the girl in the house just past his shoulder. He eats in European fashion—she notices—fork down, knife in his right hand, and small bites punctuated by placing the silverware on the plate when he’s not eating. She’d never learned such manners, even growing up in her grandmother’s house in London. Food was always meant to be eaten as quickly as possible when there was a possibility she wouldn’t have a meal for days.

“I like watching you instead,” she says, again rewarded by his bashful expression. There’s something addictive about matching his intensity from last night with the _who-gives-a-fuck_ shtick she’s become used to with her friends. If he thought she was serious after yesterday’s encounter in the green room, he’d been sorely mistaken. She’ll take any opportunity she can get to make him uncomfortable. 

“This is good,” he says quietly, not looking up.

“Paige is the house chef. None of us rejects ever learned how to properly cook except Poe, and he’s too lazy.” She realizes he probably cares little for her rinky-dink little household, but he’s an audience unwilling or not. 

“I knew Poe’s parents,” he states flatly. “They didn’t have much time for cooking.”

“Like yours?” Leia’s cooking skills—or rather her lack of them—were legendary amongst La Res staff. One Thanksgiving she’d managed to dry out a turkey so badly it had practically turned to dust with the first cut and they’d ordered pizza instead. The General had left the cooking to her neurotic housekeeper Cee after that.

He swallows visibly, hiding his mouth behind a sip of coffee and still not looking up.

“I’ll give you a ride back to your hotel if you need it,” she offers.

“It’s far. I’ll call a ride.” 

His answer is so immediate it almost stings a little, so she just nods and picks at her plate. 

“Your tour is over?” she asks.

“The Japanese leg starts in a week,” he offers. “Then Korea.”

“At least you get some time off?” Rey knows her optimism can be grating, but he’s brooding and she can’t think of a more appropriate response after slipping up about his parents. “And you get to go to Japan? I’ve never been anywhere like that.”

His shoulders are hunched as he pushes his half-eaten plate away. “Thanks for breakfast,” he says. “I should go. I need to check out of the hotel.”

“Of course.” Rey’s no-nonsense work attitude takes over as she grabs his plate, leading him inside. “If you call your ride now they’ll be here in about ten minutes, tops. You want some more coffee?”

He grunts indecipherably, hunched over the phone he’d pulled from his jacket pocket, so she leaves him outside. In the kitchen Rose and Jessika are emptying cans and bottles into the sink and tossing them into a black plastic garbage bag as Finn works through the biggest stack of pancakes she’s ever seen. 

“Do I need to kick him out?” Finn asks, mouth full. “I’ve done it before.”

Rey gives him the kind of look that makes him nod at her sympathetically even as she shoves her uneaten bacon onto his plate.

“They’ll be out of our hair soon enough,” Rose offers. “I heard the other one go outside. No pancakes for bigoted assholes in this house, thank God.”

“Please don’t tell me he stayed here last night,” Finn looks like he’s going to turn green—and not from a hangover. 

“After the dance party Rey had to give Poe all her towels,” Rose says. “Better get new towels, Rey. We’ll need to burn them.”

Rey busies herself making tea, flipping the switch on the electric kettle. She rummages through the cupboard by the sink pretending she’s just looking for the right flavor for a relaxing morning rather than looking out the window to make sure she’s not just imagining the tall, dark figure pacing the patio with his cell phone in his hands.

 _What am I doing?_ she asks herself. While the water boils she darts back to her room and puts on the kind of clothing that seems the most appropriate to leave him a memory of: ripped jean shorts and a sleeveless Siouxie shirt so well-worn it’s practically see-through, with her favorite bralet underneath. She laces up her scuffed boots, tying knots hastily as she hears the kettle begin to scream.

She’s braiding her hair when she she enters the kitchen to see Jessika indicating with a steaming mug towards the backyard.

“If you want to say goodbye to your asshole, he went through the front gate.” She gives Rey a scandalizing look. 

Rey runs, rounding the corner to the foyer and out the front door so quickly she knows she’s going to look like an idiot. She nearly runs into two figures locked in the world’s most passionate kiss. 

Poe has his hand fisted in the man’s shirt, and they barely seem to notice her until she slams the front door behind her. Hux’s cigarette is half-ash as the two break apart to look at her—both sets of eyes glazed and lips swollen. Behind them, a dark grey car is idling at the curb with tinted windows rolled up and reflecting the morning sun.

Rey can’t help but double over into laughter, covering her mouth to stop from braying. Poe shrugs, hand releasing the fabric of Hux’s dress shirt to pat it smooth and then turning, a hand running through his thick, curly hair. Hux refuses to look at either of them as he bolts for the Uber. He’s a robot under his thick wool peacoat, disappearing into the front seat. 

“God, why?” Rey hiccups, giving him a slow head shake of disapproval.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he says, clapping her shoulder on his way back into the house. “You can’t judge.”

Rey sobers up, gathering her courage to go up to the car, but she only makes it a few steps forward before it rolls away, kicking up dust from the driveway and unwashed streets. Her heart sinks in her chest as she continues walking forward, watching the last shred of her confidence that he wanted to see her again roll away.

She works her frustration out on the still-smoking cigarette butt in the dirt, untwisting the braid she hadn’t finished. Her hands work through her hair as the voice from behind her startles her. 

“That was my ride.” 

She turns to find Ben standing next to Poe’s Camaro, his phone still in his hand. His face is what she can only pin down as being as relieved as she feels in the same moment.

Rey doesn’t let herself smile, even though she wants to.

“I forgot to get your number,” he says, a grin tugging his face into sheepishness. 

“I was going to ask for yours, too,” Rey says quietly. They stand in awkward silence for a little longer, until he finally ducks his head, embarrassed.

“I guess I could use that ride, after all.”

“Let me get my keys,” she says, sprinting back into the house so he can’t see her beaming.

* * *

“You shouldn’t be driving this thing,” he says for the fifth time. “We’re going to die.”

Every city in Arizona is a godforsaken sprawl and there’s no way to avoid taking the Falcon on to the 10 to get him to Starr Pass resort. The aging Vanagon reaches highway speed with a shudder and the knocking of old cabinetry, and she swears he’s shrunk to half his size in the gray, padded seat with it’s cut-out headrest. It swivels whenever he forgets to hold still, and he’s clinging to the dash with white knuckles. 

“German made, Ben,” she scoffs. “Besides, I worked on it last week.”

“I’m surprised this piece of junk is still even one piece,” he says, fiddling with the air controls and turning on the tape deck. Whether he turned it on accidentally or deliberately doesn’t matter: the vehicle is immediately filled with Madonna’s “Angel.” 

“Really?” He’s smirking, appropriately just as Madonna’s laughter between choruses fills the space. 

Rey hits eject immediately, before the song can transition into the possibly-more-damning “Like A Virgin.” 

“If you’re going to question my taste at least pick out another tape first.” She waves her hand behind his seat at the fruit crate packed with stacked plastic rectangles. “You have five seconds before I’m pushing play again.”

He’s digging through the crate and practically juggling the next cassette he finds as he replaces it. Rey’s eyes dart under her sunglasses from the empty road to watch his long finger press in the cassette to click into place, and the play button. Immediately there’s one of the most famous grinding guitar riffs ever written along with its equally famous drum accompaniment.

“Typical,” she laughs even as Lemmy sings over her: _If you like to gamble, I tell you I'm your man… you win some, lose some, all the same to me…_

“Classic,” he counters, setting aside the tapes so he can pantomime playing an air guitar. His arms are so long they knock against her and she relishes the contact. They settle into a comfortable mode of light head-banging and Rey filling in the drums on the giant steering wheel in front of her, singing “THE ACE OF SPADES” over and over again in mock-metal voices.

“I cannot tell you how many times I failed playing that song on Rock Band,” she admits once the song ends and the rattlesnake intro of “Love Me Like a Reptile” begins. “Finn nailed Expert drums first try.”

“Hmm,” he says, pulling the box back into his lap to sort through his new catch with care. His head is at her shoulder and she can smell him again, hotel shampoo and that deodorant she wishes she knew the name of, for _reasons_. Immediately she remembers the one obligation she’d committed to before last night had swept her into its arms with music and mixed substances.

“Oh!” Rey checks the road, finding they’re already on 19 and past the exit that leads to Old Town. Familiar buildings get smaller in the rearview as she checks signs for the next exit. “I need to check the security footage so you can file a police report on the guy who K.O.ed your tour bus.”

She turns down the volume on the console, her arm bumping against his forehead. He flinches slightly in the corner of her eye.

“Forget about it. Insurance will cover it, anyway,” he says. “Isn’t it your day off?”

“Not when I’m running the place,” she huffs, thinking of the texts that must be rolling into her phone now that everyone is waking up from their individual nights of debauchery. “You’re not mad about it?”

“There are flights out of Tucson to LA every day. It’s better than another day stuck with… in uncomfortable seats,” Ben says. His hand stops the fuzzy gold dice hanging from the rearview mirror from swinging.

“Well, that’s a blessing, at least.” Rey smiles at him as she turns off the 259 exit towards Silverlake Road. “You catching a flight tonight?”

“Knowing Ra—Sloane—she’s picked up a flight already and is just waiting for us to get back,” he says this while reaching for his phone in the jacket across his lap. She smiles watching him fumble with the screen in his hand, his too-large fingers picking out letters. 

“Big shot,” she says under her breath, turning up winding streets to their destination. 

They spend the rest of their ride in relative quiet as he texts someone, thumbs sliding across the smooth glass of his phone. Rey’s is a hand-me-down with a cracked screen and she’s never given much time to it, content to force people to speak to her in person. The rounded hills of Tucson are a backdrop for the gigantic pseudo-Frank Lloyd Wright resort and it’s perfectly-spaced palm trees. She follows the gentle curves of the too-wide swathes of blacktop. If it’s to be believed by what she’s seen, the wild beauty of the desert is just an excuse to build parking lots and roads in equal measure. The roll into the square entrance with its unassuming valet and check-in space and she shifts the Falcon into park, shaking her head at the reluctant valet approaching the vehicle. 

“You owe me $35,” she says—holding out her hand and wiggling her fingers jokingly. He looks at her startled, and then back at the large doors, before placing his right hand in hers. His incredibly warm skin sliding into her palm jolts the smile right off her face.

“I have $100 for you if you take me to the airport,” he says, brown eyes almost amber in the clear light of day as they search her own. He’s close, eyes roving between her eyes and her lips. Motörhead saves her from embarrassing herself by drowning out how hard she’s breathing even playing in the background.

“You know I’m not taking your money,” she says, insulted.

He closes his eyes, squeezing her hand with the second that’s wrapped beneath it.

“Would you wait here for a minute?” 

“A minute,” she agrees. “Then I’m gone.”

“Please don’t leave.” 

His hand lifts her own to his face and his lips press against the back of it, eyes clenched closed. They only open when he releases her, and even then he’s still holding her with his gaze, watching her for whatever flight or fight she’s feeling in that moment. She may as well be in the circle of a UFO’s beam being pulled into the sky.

“You have five minutes,” she says, even as her tongue darts across her lips to wet them. She’s transcended far enough that her hand remains hovering in the space between their seats even as he lets her go.

Then he’s out the door, striding towards the entrance to the hotel so deliberately that the bellhop angling for new luggage to grab from the Falcon has to grab his cart to keep it from toppling over. Rey collapses into her seat, bringing her hand to her face and smiling behind it. 

* * *

_She’s going to leave,_ he thinks. His lips feel warm and his mind is still racing to how closely she’d leaned in, and how radiant her face had looked after what was a rather stupid gesture. _What kind of jerk kisses hands anyway, who does he think he is, Gomez Addams?_ All of this is is completely, fundamentally wrong and he is running headfirst into it.

He only had one reason to come back here besides his luggage, but he couldn’t tell Rey that. He heads towards the same spot he’d left the evening before in the hotel restaurant and bar, finding almost the exact same scene. Rae Sloane has taken up residence at her patio table of choice, the best vantagepoint to send Peavey to intervene before anyone can approach. They haven’t been recognized often in this literal wasteland but given time and his presence, its inevitable. 

“I’m not coming with you,” he says as he walks up. Hux is cowering in the shade of the umbrella, Ray-Bans slipping down his nose as he watches him approach. Phasma is stretched out in the sun and blinding everyone within eyesight with her silver bathing suit and aviators mirroring the blue sky above. Rae’s unreadable face looks up at him from her breakfast. 

“I got your text. No skin off my back,” she says, her long fingers wrapping around a champagne glass of mimosa. “Having fun in nowhere, Ben?”

“I’ve got… business,” he says, chest heaving. The sun is getting higher and trickles of sweat are threading down over his scalp.

“We have a video shoot on Wednesday,” Hux reminds him. The sneer on the corner of his mouth is twitching, but he looks as sweaty and tired as Ben feels.

“You staying that long?” Phasma asks, nonchalantly.

“No.” He steps into the circle of the umbrella, reaching for the nearest glass of water and taking a long drink, ice sliding against his lips. “Just need to figure out what happened to the tour bus.”

“Ed’s already on it,” Rae says with a shrug that reveals her white bathing suit and a fit shoulder from under a red-and-blue wrap. He always had trouble remembering she’s past sixty—almost his mother’s age—but then she’s ageless in a way that almost terrifies him.

“You don’t need to lie to us. You met a girl,” Rae polishes off her drink. “It’s not something to be ashamed of.” Phasma snickers around a straw buried in a glass of red liquid and a miniature umbrella. Rae shoots her a look from beneath her white-rimmed sunglasses that quiets the taller woman.

“I’m not… It’s not like that.”

“She works for his mother,” Hux interjects.

“I see,” Rae says, eyebrows raising. “That’s an interesting choice, Ben.”

Anxiety rises up in his gut. He’s not sure why he even bothered to give them a parting—he knew they’d team up on him. They always did. “We’re not having this conversation,” he snarls. “Not now, not ever. I’ll be on a plane back tonight.”

“Enjoy your vacation, Solo.” Hux says, pushing his sunglasses up. “Don’t get lost in the desert.”

Ben turns on his heel, sure he’ll kill him if he continues to countdown the seconds in his head. His five minutes are up and although he knows she’ll wait— _he still hadn’t gotten her number_ —he doesn’t want to push his luck. 

“We checked out for you so your luggage is in the lobby,” Rae calls out after him, making him pause in his tracks. “Make sure you have everything you _need_.” It’s cryptic but he knows exactly what she’s referring to, and the anxiety coils deeper.

“You’ll need some condoms,” Hux mutters as if he thought he couldn’t hear him, before letting out a squawk when Phasma or Rae—or maybe both—reach across the table to smack him in the head.

“You’re all fucking assholes,” he says as he walks away, middle finger raised high. Sloane had saved him the trouble of getting his stuff. The terrified bellhops pull his travel bag from where its stowed with the rest of their communal check out. He races to pull his travel bag together, grabbing a fresh set of clothes. When he exits through the doors beside the giant, obnoxious revolving door he finds Rey in a spitting match with an nervous valet trying to get her to move the Falcon. The man is already cowed but he backs up a good fifteen feet when Ben moves between them.

“Thank you for waiting,” he says. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

She’s a tiny fury in combat boots, completely at odds with the golf course stretching behind her. Her flushed face looks between him and the hotel as if it were a barrier she couldn’t enter and would have torn down if it meant that he never came back from it. He drops his bag to grab her shoulders, pulling her into his chest and giving her a hug. It’s the first he’s had in a long time, and he can’t remember the last time he’d initiated one. 

“I don’t want you to take me to the airport,” he says into the loose waves of brown hair tickling his nose.

“What?” She pulls away to look up at him. Her sad, searching face is all he needs to realize the hell he might have put her through if he’d just left. The thought that he was ready to do so at her house, without saying goodbye even, pricks at him. He was so sure that she’d wanted him gone until he’d watched her as the car had driven away. It’s not a joke, or a game, or flirting, or youth. She’s _into_ him. He was an idiot not to let himself believe it.

“Where?” she asks, recognition dawning on her face. 

“Anywhere but here.” He clears his throat, glancing over his shoulder at the hotel staff trying not to stare. “As long as it’s with you.”

 

Her hands rise to his chest, still loosely in his arms.

 

“Can I kiss you?” 

_God, she means it._

“Yes,” he says as he leans in. Her eyes shutter close and her chin rises, and unbeknownst to her he smiles as he plants a kiss on her delicate forehead. “But not here.”

* * *

The sky is dotted with clouds and the sun is still high as they roll into their destination, with its faded mid-century motels and Western-themed signs lining the roadway. They pass a tiny cemetery of small, flat boards painted white with black lettering—Rey knows well that they bear cheeky explanations for how their occupants died by hanging and shooting.

The surprise of their destination was stolen by the first billboard they’d passed but it had still given him a laugh. The drive was relaxing, listening to John Denver (Rey’s request once it became clear they were trading off on tape selection) and talking about his tour so-far, one of the safer subjects she’d landed upon after getting used to his struggle to hold a conversation. 

She’d made him slather himself in sunscreen, one of the essential components in the “bug-out” bag she kept in the Falcon. She was no stranger to picking up and going—she’d gone as far as Joshua Tree park, or Sedona, on her days off when she wanted to get away and work on music in absolute quiet. This was closer and, she figured, provided more of a distraction from being alone and the nagging urge to touch him.

 

“I thought there would be vultures. Maybe an Ennio Morricone whistle,” Ben says as they exit the Falcon and make their way down unfinished dirt streets towards the main strip. 

“Wrong movie,” Rey says blithely. His face is hidden behind his black sunglasses but she can see him smile. The drab, white face of historic Schieffelin Hall rises behind his overdressed frame, one of the few larger buildings in the low profile town. 

 

“I’ll be your huck—”

“No quoting!” Rey hits him on the arm, surprised by how it doesn’t even seem to catch him off-guard, much less make him flinch. “I’ve only seen the movie once but I’ve been here a hundred times and I’ve heard them all.”

“A hundred times?” He sounds unconvinced.

“If you hadn’t noticed,” she says while feeling the smirk crawl across her face, “there aren’t many options out here.”

“True. Where to go first?”

“My favorite place,” she says, pointing down the road. He heads off before her, darting across the empty highway towards the lovingly-preserved buildings that rise up from the small heart of Tombstone. She scurries to catch up with his long stride.

“Let me guess, the Crystal Palace,” he says as they come to Allen street, bypassing throngs of tourists in a mix of Sunday’s best and American flag t-shirts and cargo shorts.

“Keep going,” she says as she grabs his arm and takes him past the bustle of the main thoroughfare with it’s crowds and horse-drawn stagecoaches towards what would look like nondescript buildings. 

She leads him into one, past a tiny crowded gift shop and what purports to be a museum but is just a wall of historic photos, and out another door to the treasure contained within. The low building encircles an open space, with barely a glimpse of the sky to be viewed above them. He has to duck to avoid the trellises over their heads, and she feels a bright joy as she sees recognition wash over him.

“She’s called the Shady Lady,” Rey says. “Largest rosebush in the world.”

It’s late in the season and decay has set in so that white, papery blossoms litter the footpaths, browning petals ground into the soil. It only makes the scent stronger; the heady smell of violets and antique perfume drifts in with each breeze as they make their way towards the heart of the bush. It’s bigger around than most desert trees, twisted and dark and reaching up to twine it’s green-flocked arms through the old wooden framing supporting its endless branches.

“It’s beautiful,” he says, his hand reaching out to touch the wood worn down by many more fingertips than theirs. She walks up beside him, lightly brushing the trunk until her fingers snake over his. 

“It is. Also there’s a sign over that says ‘no touching’.” 

“You’re breaking the rules,” he says dangerously low. She looks up at him only to watch him stand up to full height and immediately whack his skull on a beam. Dead leaves and white petals rain down and there’s a few disconcerted noises from the elderly couples sitting on the benches nearby. 

Rey laughs so hard she can hardly stand up, rushing to check the top of his head. Even on her tiptoes she can’t reach it so he leans down. When that doesn’t work he almost kneels in the dirt, changing tack to grab her around the middle and throw her over his shoulder. She yelps in protest as he carries her like a soldier out of battle towards the open side street, just past the perimeter of the rosebush. Finally, he drops her down, but not before standing to full height so that she can slide down his chest. Rey is light-headed when her boots meet the ground, more from his strong grip releasing her by degrees—wide hands dragging across her thighs, back, ribs.

“Why’d you do that?” she asks, collecting herself and pulling her shirt down into place.

“Because I wanted to enjoy this without an audience,” he nods back towards the wall of dripping rose vines and white flowers.

“There’s a rooftop view over there,” she says, catching her breath. But he’s staring at her as if she weren’t real, his mouth moving in that determined way that means he’s thinking about something. She takes a few deep breaths, coming down from feeling lighter than a cloud in his arms. Then he’s looking at something past her, donning his sunglasses again and running a hand through his hair.

“We have an audience.” Ben nods towards a gaggle of people down the street, looking in their direction after apparently realizing that the Tombstone Wild West Theme park—just a collection of fake, too-small buildings and a miniature golf course—is closed.

“Well this _is_ a tourist trap.” She takes his hand again to drag him down the street. “Where do you want to go next?” 

“I’m not —” he begins. 

“If you don’t have an option in mind we’re going to my second favorite place,” she says.

“It isn’t the ‘Old Time Photos’ place is it?” They’d passed it along the way, so she’s not surprised it’s the first thing to pop into his head.

“It is _now_.” 

Rey grabs his arm, practically dragging him. The discomfort on his features is in contrast to how willingly he follows her to the aptly-named Can Can Photos, only protesting with snark and the occasional threat. There’s the usual line of families waiting for their turn so she buys him ice cream next door to soften the blow, laughing at him when he orders a small serving of pistachio flavor in a little cup.

“You’re weird,” she says, chomping down on a waffle cone overfilled with scoops of sea salt caramel and fudge swirl. 

“You’ve got chocolate on your… ” Ben gestures with his hand at all of his face and Rey rubs madly at her cheek until he swipes at her face with a napkin. The rough paper is followed by him brushing a thumb over her cheek. She sinks into the touch, ice cream dripping on the worn wooden slats at her feet.

 

“Swift!” Rey jumps up at the sound of her last name being called out by the photo shop employee, dumping the remains of her ice cream in the trash. 

“Are you ready for this?” she asks.

“This is legally torture, you know.”

“No one ever comes here again after visiting, so you need a picture,” she laughs. “Besides, this will be the best blackmail.”

The attendant waits patiently as Rey picks out one of the oft-worn dusty outfits for him, going for the customary dark ensemble. He sticks the biggest, blackest cowboy hat he can find on his head, still mashing his ears down due to a too-small crown size. 

“If I’m wearing this, you have to wear the saloon girl outfit,” he says. 

“In your dreams.” She rifles through the rack of costumes with their fixed stitches and faded hues. 

“I forgot this isn’t your first rodeo.” He’s exceptionally goofy when he smiles, and Rey sticks her tongue out as she takes her outfit back to the changing rooms. She remembers the last time she’d been out here. The girls of the Squad had made a trip on a dead Tuesday so they could spend time taking what Paige jokingly referred to as “publicity photos” for their Bandcamp site. Rose had gone through five different saloon girl outfits before she’d found the right gold and black ensemble and forced them all to follow suit. They’d each chipped in for the full package of their Old Western Glamour Shots, with the incriminating photo series now hanging in their living room.

When she breaks out from behind the canvas curtain he’s pointing two fake guns at her, gesticulating wildly.

“I’ve got two guns—”

Rey snatches one from him, shaking her head and mouthing “no.”

“You look like a villain,” she says approvingly. 

“You look like Sharon Stone in _The Quick and The Dead_.” They succumb to the ministrations of the staff in arranging them on chairs and barrels, against the backdrop. They’re posed and coached to look more serious, but neither works. Eventually they end up with her leg up on the chair beside him, his posture spread wide as she threatens him with the fake pistol aimed at his heart.

“Who’s Sharon Stone?” she asks, innocently.

“How old are you, exactly?” He responds in fake horror.

“Twenty-four.”

“Oh,” he says—genuinely surprised.

“Why, are you an old man?” She lifts the brim of his hat with the muzzle of her revolver, a smug grin hovering on her lips. She knows exactly how old he is, and the fact that he’s an overgrown child under it only makes him more endearing, as she sees it. 

“Compared to you, yes,” he concedes, sitting down in a chair. “I would have pegged you for a Leonardo DiCaprio fan.”

“Who isn’t?” He’s definitely showing his age with his references, she thinks. 

The flash is blinding as the photographer rushes through their set. Neither of them is capable of actually looking at the camera so everything is in profile, his face angled up at hers in the perfect position for her to lean down… 

“Honeymoon?” The photographer asks, startling them both.

They’re still laughing about it when they finally get their pictures in their black cardstock protectors, saving the reveal for later, when they’re alone. 

* * *

It stays in her hair the whole time. She moves like she’s a wrecking ball sent into demolish a building but the damned thing doesn’t stray. Even after she’s removed the white cowboy hat affixed to her head it stays perched above her ear, buried between the strands. They make it to Crystal Palace (the only name he knows when she lets him choose) to enjoy chips and salsa and a single beer that she takes a sip from when he offers. They’re too hot and dusty to really be hungry but its a reprieve from the people outside. 

It’s the component in a spell that will break when he takes it. But he can’t stop staring, and she can’t stop giving him the returning look and shy smile that will get him in trouble in public.

“You’ve got something,” he begins, reaching up to her ear.

“Is this a magic trick?” Rey’s eyes go wide. “I love magic tricks.”

“Sort of,” he says, plucking the intact rose blossom from where its been swinging in her hair.

“No way,” she reaches to take it, just as suddenly stuffing it to her nose and breathing in deeply.

“It was in your hair,” he says, breaking her joy a little bit. “I wanted to see how long it stayed.”

“I love it.” Rey twirls the mangled flower between her fingers, setting it gently on the worn, wooden table beside her iced tea.

“We should talk,” he says, and if the flower was the nail driven into the moment those three words are the hammer. “About… this. Us.”

“Oh.” Rey’s response is almost painful. She leans back into her chair, limply. 

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he starts. He expects her to tell him that she’s sure it’s true, but her body is guarded and she’s eyeing him with distrust. 

“I’ve never had a girlfriend before. Not really,” he tries to soothe her with honesty, and so doesn’t expect the prismatic change of her expression between disbelief, mistrust, empathy, and then… something else.

“You’ve had one-night-stands,” Rey counters once she’s been able to process the system overload his words had caused.

“Not… None that I can remember.” Anxiety floods his system, punctuated by flashbacks to the worst nights of his life. 

“That’s not reassuring,” Rey says. Her voice is bitter. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m your girlfriend?”

“No.” He slips his hand across the wood with the scars it bears from generations of lovesick teenagers like himself sitting in the same uncomfortable seat. She eyes his open palm, her right hand flexing next to her unused silverware. “I’m asking if you’d like to be.” He holds his breath, every nerve in his body screeching at him with the rush of adrenaline in his veins.

“You live in a different state. And your life is, it’s too busy,” she says so quickly that he knows she’s been thinking about it longer than he has, had already made up her mind. It eats at him.

“Why does that matter?” He sounds pathetic.

Rey’s face only becomes more sad, then angry, the latter sending him into panic.

“Really?” she asks, the traces of a British accent in her voice more pronounced when her temper flares. “Really, Ben? How often could I see you, anyway?”

“Whenever you want,” he matches her for incredulity. “You know you belong in L.A., making music where people will actually hear you. Not this place.”

She doesn’t take his hand so he gestures at the room around them, filled with odd families and over-cooked meals and children running between the tables, screaming and smacking into chairs. 

“Maybe it’s easy for you to leave the people you love, but I can’t.” The words carve into bone, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth. “And I happen to love it here.”

“You’re going to die waiting for something to happen, here,” Ben says. “You deserve to be something, and somebody, Rey. Not nothing.”

A tear slides from the corner of her eye, and she brushes it away before excusing herself to the bathroom. He’s left to sit in silence, digging his knife into the booth top, shaving away a layer of epoxy to carve something, anything into the already-scarred wood. By the time she’s come back she’s dry-eyed with fresh makeup, although her eyes are rimmed with red.

“You’re the world’s biggest idiot, Ben,” she sighs, dropping down her satchel purse and shoving her card to the edge where it can be visible to the waitress. 

“You’re working your way into the running,” he counters. The look she gives him says she’s going to leave him there in Tombstone, or maybe force him at gunpoint out into the night to fend off the javelinas. He’d take it all, he knows. 

“Listen, please. I’m not good at this,” he says, resigned. “I don’t want to focus on what’s stopping us from having a relationship. I just want to enjoy the time I have with you, right now, here, because you are the most interesting, unique, talented person I’ve met. And I’ve met a lot of people.”

He watches Rey’s chin indent slightly as she fights off another round of emotion, staring at the table.

“I really don’t want anything more than that, unless you want something more… too.”

“I do,” she says quietly. “I really do. But you can’t just pretend things don’t exist like your—”

She doesn’t have time to continue before the waitress interrupts to ask if they need a copy of the bill and Rey smiles at her in a way that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Let’s enjoy today while we have it, then,” she says once their server has left them to sign their sad interaction away. She dons her bent, round-wire sunglasses, tucking the white rosebud above her left ear so that its wedged tight.

 

He doesn’t know what to say except “thank you,” but if she hears it over the cheesy piano music as they leave the restaurant, she doesn’t react.

The tension lifts a little when they stumble into the regularly scheduled re-enactment of the OK Corral showdown taking place in the street. He can see just fine past the throngs of people gathered at the storefronts but gently pushes her by the small of the back to a spot clear of tourists, with a better view.

“I’ve seen it be—”

“Show some respect.” He uses the hushed tone reserved for church or a library. “It’s the most iconic gunfight in history.”

“It was 30 seconds long,” she says, dryly.

But he has her giggling as he makes a point to explain who everyone is, who died, all the history, all into her ear in low, excited tones. She wraps herself into his frame, leaning her head against the front of his wrinkled blazer as she takes in him talking, eyes on the crowd.

“How do you know so much about it, anyway?”

“My dad thought he was a cowboy.” The words are difficult to say but he knows it’s the kind of thing she’d want to hear about, and had been avoiding asking about all day. “Westerns and Western documentaries non-stop when I was a kid. Him and my uncle and his friends would do these historical trail rides. Every year they wanted me to go, every year I pretended to be sick.”

He keeps his eyes on the four figures clad in black walking down the wide street towards the staged setting, the crowd filtering in behind them. Rey hasn’t been watching for a while. He felt her eyes on him as soon as he’d mentioned his father.

“It didn’t matter, they sent me to Luke’s ranch in Montana when I was eleven.”

“So you _are_ a cowboy,” she says, lightly. 

He grimaces, thinking back on nights sitting alone in the grass, wishing he were back in California—anywhere but the godforsaken middle of nowhere. By the look on her face he knows he’s bringing her down again, and he doesn’t even have to open his big mouth.

“A few years back someone used real bullets by accident in the shootout,” she finally breaks the silence. “Shot two people.”

Her ability to read him and change the subject makes him almost faint with relief. 

“That’s dedication to historical accuracy,” he deadpans, rewarded by her laughter. “Anywhere else you’d like to go?” 

“Yes,” she says. Her head cocks to the side, playfully. “One last stop. But we’ll have to drive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know Rey is listening to ["Angel" by Madonna unapologetically and that she got the tape from Rose.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APO9ZKtiy1c)
> 
> I tell myself everyone also knows [Motörhead's Ace of Spades](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iwC2QljLn4&list=RD1iwC2QljLn4&t=8), but I'm old. 
> 
> [John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrEljMfXYo) is never out of style or context, and yes, I bought Logan Lucky when it was on sale for $5 on i-Tunes.
> 
> [ _Tombstone_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSeFaApcTco) is one of the most quotable, rewatchable Western movies ever, and Doc Holliday can call me his sweet, soft Hungarian devil anytime.
> 
>  
> 
> [Welcome to Tombstone, one of the most lovely, tired little places I've ever been. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voSmdCEbV1k) Fun fact: the Shady Lady is apparently as big as it is thanks to human sewage in the mines below town. I'm a little sad I didn't incorporate that into my fic.


	4. fool's gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Falcon is the best wingman (she ships it), and the "one room in the inn" trope lives to die another day. 
> 
> CW: minor discussions of mental illness, but this will be a huge part of this fic so if it's too much to handle I apologize, but it's important to me and to the themes of this story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost, look at this [absolutely amazing fan-art](https://selunchen.tumblr.com/post/174307499822/brillante-como-el-espejo-alumbra-la-luna-su) for Chapter 2 from @selunchen and then give her a follow because she's the best. I cried at how awesome this was, and it wouldn't have been possible without a prompt from [@riaria84](https://riaria84.tumblr.com/) and [@ntantzen](https://ntantzen.tumblr.com/) you are a blessing and I appreciate you so much. 
> 
> Editing was once again the gift of my best friend and brilliant writer [@Ohtze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohtze) who kept me on point in this sort-of digressive chapter. I promise a return to plot in Chapter 7 but for now all you bitches are getting doused in feels . . . it will make next chapter's "earn my rating" worth it, I promise.

The Falcon breaks down twenty miles outside of Tombstone. They’d pulled out of town heading south instead of north, chasing daylight as it creeps down into pinks and yellows. Now they’re roadside in the gloom of a desert evening, illuminated only by the headlights of the sputtering Westfalia and Ben’s phone’s flashlight as he holds it over the back of the vehicle. Ghostly swaths of steam rise into the shaded landscape. 

“You do not get to say ‘you told me so’,” Rey warns after an initial round of swearing that would have made a priest stuff his ears with clay.

“We didn’t die, at least,” Ben answers. He gives her a wide berth as she opens the bonnet to find hissing steam and a horrifying heat. A dull ache enters her head as she realizes there’d have been no way for her to know if the engine light had been on since she hadn’t checked the electrical in months.

“Either I had a coolant leak or the gaskets are blown,” she says. “The engine shouldn’t be this hot for such a short trip, must have been dry by Tombstone.”

“It’s also been cooking all day,” he says. “Don’t touch that radiator.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she shouts at him over the ticks of the metal shrinking as the heat dissipates, “make yourself useful.”

“I’m calling a tow truck,” he says, swiping at his phone while still holding the light high for her to see.

“Let me,” she sighs, reaching out for his phone. He gives it up reluctantly, and she rewards him by brushing his hand with her fingers when she takes it. A quick open of his web browser and she has what she needs, dialing the 800 number to call roadside assistance and taking the card he’s pulled from his slim wallet. She walks to the front of the vehicle and talks in hushed tones to the calm, cheerful woman on the other end. 

And then there’s the wait. They both climb into the disabled vehicle, cowed by the silence. Cars and trucks pass by every few minutes, but not one stops for them. Rey is grateful.

“I take it we’re not going to your surprise destination,” he says. 

“It’s closer than Tombstone,” she sighs. “And bigger.”

“Everything is bigger than Tombstone.” In the dash light his face has settled into a look of wry amusement. 

“Trust me, it’s _much_ bigger.” Rey swivels her seat to face his, nodding at the back of the vehicle with it’s upholstered couch seat and mini-kitchen. “We’ve got some time if you want to get comfortable.”

His eyes go wide, mouth a taut line. 

“Too small for you?” she can’t help but flirt. There’s something salacious about the way his hands clutch at his dust-stained jeans, his eyes roving between the worn carpet at their feet and her lap. 

“I’m pretty sure I was conceived in this thing,” he says after a pause, with the expression of someone who’s just bitten into an ornamental orange tree fruit. Rey moves past him, stepping over her music collection to flip on the camper lights and open the tiny fridge. She pulls out two ginger ales, tossing him one. He just barely catches it, fumbling with the can until it falls past his awkwardly-bent knees. 

“No wonder you’re afraid to die in it,” she says. 

Rey slides over and opens the panel door, letting in the night with the soft chirps of insects and the smell of creosote. She flops down in the wide seat, dropping down the tray table at her left side before spreading her legs and letting her arms drape across the top of the backrest. “You never wanted to re-christen the fold-out?” she jokes.

“Absolutely not,” he coughs. She can hear him tapping the top of his can as if it could reduce the carbonation, the snap and hiss of it opening.

“Maybe just sit next to me?” He’s left with a wide span of seat beside her if he wants, but she can see the hesitation on his face even from here. She drowns her disappointment in Vernor’s and a prayer to whichever deity is watching over the ancient hills rising on either side of the road to save her from herself. 

Eventually he crawls through the constricted space, moving into place beside her. She has a moment to realize he’s stealing the drink from her hand before she hears him set it down on the table behind her. His hands come up to her face immediately afterwards.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been thinking about doing this since yesterday,” he says, his dark eyes lined in the warm glow of the overhead light, searching her face. “May I?”

She can only nod, her hands rising to close around the palms cupping her jaw so fully that her face is insulated. His thumb is tracing across her jaw, moving across her lips, and she feels her mouth part in answer. _Kiss me, please kiss me,_ she prays. It’s so quiet she can hear the bats outside as they eat the insects pulled into their headlights, the only beacon for miles. And his breathing, as he holds back, and her own held sigh in her throat. She leans forward, eyelashes low as she focuses on his full mouth, the hint of teeth behind it. But he doesn’t move, paralyzed. 

“We don’t have an audience here,” she moans, impressed by how childish it sounds. 

“When you’ve waited years, you take your time,” he says, so quietly. His breath on her lips tastes like sugar, and it moves along her face as he kisses her forehead again, this time letting his mouth travel down her temple to her cheek, to the place right below the inner corner of her eye. Rey’s capable of patience beyond his imagining—she knows what it’s like to wait to find someone she wanted to kiss—but she lets out a low _whuff_ as he works his fingers through her hair and nips at everywhere but her lips. 

When she tries to angle her head to connect with him he gently tugs her back, forcing her half-lidded eyes to the ceiling and her shoulders against the seatback. He’s not as soft with her neck, perhaps goaded by her hands running over his t-shirt and finding the familiar lines of his torso beneath. His teeth gently graze her skin, tongue pressing between them as he sucks at her throat, not hard enough to leave a mark.

“Ben,” she begs, her arms lacing over his shoulders even though he’s hunched over her like a vampire, his hands tugging the blown-out neckline of her shirt down so he can kiss her clavicle. Her legs are moving against one another, relieving only a little bit of the winding feeling in her belly, the one so close to the surface that even crossing her legs feels dirty. 

“Mmm,” he says, his teeth gently pulling on her earlobe .

“ **Ben**.” The word comes out with an explosive quality and she’s pushing back from him, pulling her shirt up as she registers the sound of gravel right before the loud alarm of the tow-truck backing up in front of them breaks the night. 

“Perfect,” he says devilishly, patting down her hair before working on his own. Rey glowers but inside she’s still warm, the throbbing where her thighs meet turning to a dull ache. She has never, in her entire life, felt as turned on as she does now and she’d be horrified if it weren’t for the fact that she notices how carefully he gets up, practically dousing himself with the can of cold soda. 

She grabs her bug-out bag from near the bench seat, checking to make sure the interior lights are off before they go out to meet their savior. The tow-truck driver is a tall gray-haired woman named Lee with tattoos so sun-damaged they’re gray blobs, but she’s friendly and kind, even giving them a ride to the VW shop on the outskirts of town. 

By the time they make it to Bisbee the sky is a shade of blue like the depths near a continental shelf—and really, that’s what the city looks like, disappearing deep into the ground at acute angles as if it were bottomless, with the southern vista carved into a mountain. There’s roads at different levels of the city built into the hillsides, old houses and adobe walls with their magenta-flowered bougainvillea lining the narrow streets that lead down to the century-old buildings. Even packed as tightly as it is, the city is much bigger than Tombstone and a breeze that winds through the Mule Mountains, carrying the faint smells of Sunday night dinners and desert flowers like jasmine and iris. 

“It’s beautiful,” he tells her, once they’re dropped off on the way into town. They choose to walk for a bit rather than get another ride, carrying their travel bags like hitchhikers and marveling at each strange little alleyway or wrought-iron fence hiding treasures beyond.

“I’m glad you like it,” she says, reaching out her hand to grab his as they come upon the Old Bisbee historical district. Most building with their advertisements for antiques or novelty housewares are dark, but there’s a bustle in the streets and the sound of live music drifting towards them. It seems unusual for a Sunday evening until Rey spots familiar banners and flags hanging between the narrowly-spaced buildings, illuminated by christmas lights zig-zagging between them.

“The Squad’s going to be upset they missed Pride weekend,” Rey laughs. “We come out every year but it must have gotten away from us.”

“Do you have a favorite place you like to stay the night?” Ben asks, nodding along with her at the group of brightly-clad people who pass them on the street, holding flashing cups and singing off-key. Rey has to fight to get the words out with the sudden reminder that they won’t get the van back until at least tomorrow. No shops are open on the weekend this late at night. 

“We usually rent a house since there’s so many of us,” she manages, her voice quavering. “But it’s a little awkward to book an Airbnb right now.”

“I could use a night in a real bed,” he says, rolling his neck to punctuate the statement. “Not that you don’t have a real bed, just…”

“Do you mind sharing again?” Rey asks, looking up to see his face in the orange sodium lights. She swears there’s a twinkle in his eye as his mouth crooks into a smile. 

“Under or over the covers?” 

He squeezes her hand as they pass a window with a display of the Virgin Mary of the Sacred Heart. The large statue is surrounded by candles with images of celebrities and glittery Christmas ornaments shaped like mermen with moustaches. She pauses in her tracks, only a little entranced by the tchotchkes and the beautifully-illustrated La Sirena Loteria cards framing the glass.

“I’m getting us two rooms, Rey.” He releases her, but she just shakes her head at him. 

“It’s not that.” The warmth in her body isn’t going anywhere but she crosses her arms across her chest, shrugging under her canvas backpack. “I’m not nervous, just…”

_What happens when this is over and you’re gone?_

“Let me at least buy you dinner first before we talk beds,” he says. “You must be starving.”

Her growling stomach agrees, so she takes his hand again when he offers it, letting the intrusive thoughts slip away like the echoes of their footsteps on the sidewalk.

  

* * *

  

“Not a single room?” Ben can barely hear the front desk attendant at the Copper Queen over the live music playing from the nearby saloon. The building is old and the sound carries, the lobby packed with small groups of people milling around in feather boas and similarly bright neon hats. Rey has stolen away to catch a glimpse of the drag show happening in the saloon, leaving him to find another method of calming himself.

“Sorry, sir. Most guests are checking out in the morning.” The man, barely in his twenties by the look of it, nods sympathetically. “Most places have been booked for month—”

“Find another place and there’s another one for you,” Ben slips him $20 across the wooden desk, which only makes the younger man go even more pale as if he expected to be chewed out for taking it. “Preferably a king-sized bed.”

He storms off to let the rush of frustration cool down. If he were more patient he’d look up places on his phone, but he hates dealing with travel plans. He hasn’t had to book a hotel room or a flight for himself in years. Ben finds Rey at the entry to the bar, craning her neck over the sea of people to try and catch a glimpse of the tall figure with blonde hair on the stage singing a soulful rendition of a Dolly Parton song. 

“How’d it go?” Rey asks, seeming to already know by taking in his face. He can’t help it—he’s never been able to hide emotion very well under the veneer others seem to be able to maintain. 

“That bad, eh? The restaurant has an hour-and-a-half wait, too.” She shrugs. “This turned out to be an adventure, didn’t it?”

Her unflagging brightness burns away some of the foul mood that’s been brewing since he’d first realized how sweat-crusted, sunsick, hungry, and tired the day had left him. With her all the discomforts fade into the background, impossible to focus on when her wiry frame is bouncing from toe to toe and her wide, white grin flashes for everyone she makes eye contact with.

“Sir,” the front desk guy says behind him, clearing his throat, handing him a card and—to his chagrin—his $20 back. “There’s one place. The front office closes early, so you’ll want to head over there as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” Rey says brightly, plucking the business card but not the cash. “Do they have food?”

“Yes! Dot’s. Best burger in town.” The smitten look on the boy’s face makes something hard and cold rise up in his chest, so he plucks her away with a light hand on her shoulder, leaving him gaping. Rey cheers silently, completely oblivious, as he opens the app for an Uber. 

“Where are we going?” 

“Someplace called The Shady Dell,” Rey says, handing him the hand-written address, off the highway 80 they’d traveled into town on. “Sounds exciting.”

He’s not sure if exciting is the word he’d have used by the time their ride pulls into the open desert space, the sign with it’s Boardwalk-style postcard lettering proclaiming their destination. 

“Is that a _boat_?!” Rey gasps, not even waiting for them to reach a complete stop before opening the door. He may as well have taken her to Disneyland. Ben watches her dance around yet again, boots scuffing in the grit as she takes in the tiny trailer park. There’s a mismatched fleet of retro recreational vehicles, including multiple Airstreams and what appears to be a 40-foot yacht perched for all eternity in the middle of dry land. Small paper lanterns hang from the trees between classic cars and a white gazebo, lending it all a sort of kitsch magical vibe that even he can’t deny is endearing. 

“Ben, this is fantastic,” she gushes. “I’ve heard of this place but I thought it was like a caravan parking place of some sort.”

“We could have saved ourselves the hassle and stayed in the Falcon,” he says.

“Don’t be a spoilsport,” Rey chides. They make their way to the tiny white building that serves as the front office, interrupting an older man watching a Golden Girls rerun on the tiny, boxy TV set with its more modern antennae beside him. 

“Ah, good to have you,” he says when Ben takes out his wallet. “You must be here for the Tiki Bus.”

He nearly chokes at the combination of words, but especially the last part. Rey shoots him a look of pure elation, eyes wide, and repeats slowly: “ _the Tiki Bus_.”

“You’re lucky we have an opening, but then not many people checking in on Sunday. Here’s the key. Shared showers and bathrooms are that building over there. There’s one in the room but it’s… small.”

He gives Ben a consoling look over his double-barred plastic bifocals, noting his size as he’s looming over the tiny desk. 

“You staying just the one night?”

“Yes,” Ben says, filling out the paperwork. Rey’s hand drifts over his hunched shoulder, settling into the fabric of his jacket and providing something of an anchor that keeps him from tearing through the paper into the wood beneath it. 

“Diner’s closing but they should have time to make you some grub if you hurry,” the man says. Rey is almost skipping as they take their key and enter the silver diner with its old bread advertisement on the outside. The staff inside are cleaning up but a woman in a red-and-white apron and pink dress takes their order--a Reuben special and a veggie burger--with a look of tired acceptance. 

Rey slides into the tiny booth across from him as he manages to wedge his knees under the low table, hiding his discomfort for her benefit.

“I can’t wait to see our room,” she laughs. “This is the best trip I’ve ever been on.”

“You haven’t been many places, have you?” It’s stated as a fact, without the intent of being mean, but he watches her smile falter. 

“My ma and da were always on the road,” she says quietly. “I went back to London when I was five and didn’t come back to the states until I was nineteen. Never had much money to really go anywhere.”

His heart cracks like an egg, the deep feeling of sympathy contained within leaking out everywhere. He wants to punch himself for putting that look on her face; it’s a feeling he’s becoming accustomed to. The waitress interrupts them to drop off a strawberry milkshake topped with whipped cream and a cherry. Rey plays with the long spoon in the tall, fluted glass, enthusiasm drained.

“How did you come back to the states?” Ben asks, handing her a straw and taking his own.

“I saved up. Odd jobs. I bought a one-way ticket to Phoenix to find my mom’s family, but they’d moved away already. Ended up working a few places here and there, crashing on couches, until I met Finn at a metal show.” 

“Metal?” He asks.

“Slayer,” she explains, before sucking hard on her straw to fight against the still-too-thick pink liquid. 

“Ahh,” he says. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a Slayer fan.”

Rey crinkles her nose at him. “If I had a dollar for everytime I’ve heard that bullshit I’d be richer than God.”

“Sorry,” he offers. “I meant more your style. You seem to know how to play more… classically.”

“My foster dad in London owned a guitar repair and instrument store. You get a lot of old crusty guitar heads around those sort of places. They’d bring me CDs they liked, sometimes records. Plutt always made me pawn those, but I’d listen to them in the shop.”

“You had friends, at least?”

“Not really,” she shakes her head. “Finn was the first real friend I ever had.”

Their food arrives and they both dig in with gusto, eating in silence. The weight of her words sits on him for awhile, reminding him to check his phone and email when this fantasy breaks.

“Why do you not get along with Finn?” Rey asks once she’s inhaled most of her burger and onion rings, stealing one of his fries to dip it in her shake. 

Ben shrugs, picking through an unappealing mess of cold pastrami, sauerkraut, and Thousand Island dressing on marbled rye. “I think the last thing he said to me was that I was an entitled prick and that I was going to die alone. That’s what I can remember, at least.”

Rey snorts in the middle of drinking her shake. “Well, he told me his beef was mostly with Phasma, and Hux. They sound like a nightmare to work with.”

“Birds of a feather,” he says. “They’re reliable nightmares, at least. Most professionals are. Finn was an exception.” All this talk of his bandmates already has him thinking about the eventual return to L.A., and it sours his stomach.

“He’s a gem,” Rey agrees. “I’d probably be dead in a ditch somewhere if it wasn’t for him.” She says it flippantly, but there’s an edge in her voice that tells him there’s truth to it.

“You survived.” Ben is aware he’s staring at her but she isn’t uncomfortable, just softer and more distant.

“You did too, didn’t you?” Her hazel eyes look at his, shimmering with the beginning of tears. 

“We’ll see,” he reaches out to take her milkshake and tries it via spoon. She fights him for the cherry and wins, demonstrating with aplomb her ability to tie the stem into a knot with her tongue even as the waitress shoots them a look that tells Ben to run. He leaves twice the money for their bill on the table, disengaging Rey from sucking down the last of her milkshake noisily. 

Together they find their unit, unmistakable thanks to a thatched-roof patio structure built around the bright teal-blue bus. The lights are already on, and the revealed interior is even worse than he’d imagined. The first thing on entry is a driver’s seat and giant steering wheel, which Rey immediately sits down at to turn and play with the hula dancer on the dash. He has to duck to avoid the ceiling—completely covered in palm grass—sliding past a tiny range and tiny chairs to view the sleeping situation.

“Well at least there’s two beds.” The sarcasm in his voice is practically eating through the floor once it drips out, and Rey peeks around him at the twin on one side and what might have been a full bed on the other—if full beds were sized for young children. 

“Looks like a closed loo, at least,” she offers, opening the room just past his bed. Her shock immediately melts into laughter. “You’ve got to see this.” The tiny closet holds a giant wooden tiki statue, illuminated by strip lighting in whites and reds. Its comically angry face stares back at them, and Ben can sympathize. 

“He looks like you,” she says, closing the door. “Probably bad luck to keep that open. Found the toilet.”

They both make a face as they look in the back at the meager bathroom. She closes the other door, turning to face him. In the cramped quarters, she’s pressed against his chest with his head angled over her.

“Sorry it’s so incredibly small,” she says, looking between his mouth and eyes. “At least you should have a decent bed tomorrow.” _When you’re back_ , are the unspoken words on her rose lips.

His hands wrap around her upper arms, squeezing gently. She’s firm and warm and electric in his grip.

“I would not want to be anywhere else,” he assures her, kissing her forehead and relishing the slackness in her limbs when she leans into it. They break apart, and her face tells him he doesn’t have long before she’s going to tackle him to the floor and take what he’s been withholding all day. He almost wishes she would.

“I’m going to go outside before my neck stays in this position permanently,” he says, releasing them both. She moves to follow but gets hung up on the treasure sitting just behind the driver’s seat.

“Oh look, Ben,” she says, breathlessly. Her fingers deftly lift the lid of the box on the table, revealing a record player. Several well-worn sleeves are propped up between themed bookends, bright against the faded Polynesian-print curtains.

“No Hawaiian music,” he begs, pausing at the entrance. ”Or Elvis.”

She gives him a few choice words but he’s already sunk into one of the chairs on the small deck just outside, next to a covered island awning with an empty bar table. The whole scene is peaceful, trailers with lit windows through patterned drapes far enough away that they feel like satellites orbiting their small world.

“Jackpot!” Rey’s voice drifts out through the open kitchenette window. There’s a pause as she works the machine, placing the needle on the disk with the customary scratch and pops. He imagines the soft smile on her face as the record spins and then the ringing sounds of two twelve-string guitars plucking in unison begins to play through the muted speakers.

_Wouldn't it be nice if we were older? Then we wouldn't have to wait so long And wouldn't it be nice to live together, in the kind of world where we belong_

She’s got the audio down low but Rey’s voice is already over it, growing louder as she moves past the window, presumably bringing her bag to her bed. He closes his eyes and lets the evening enclose him like lukewarm bathwater, like he’s home and has always been there with her singing Beach Boys in the kitchen. 

Water runs as she sings “bah bah bah” over accordions and horns and drums. Rey joins him outside quickly, her face freshly scrubbed and changed into loose pajama pants, swaying along to “You Still Believe in Me”. She collapses beside him, her legs stretching out so that her feet swing over the side of her wicker chair and rest in his lap. He shifts so her toes can dig into the denim covering his thighs. 

“How are you doing, Ben?” Rey asks, twisting her hair back into a bun. “Want to chance the communal showers?”

He shakes his head, his hand rubbing idly over her foot and the faint lines where sun had cut through the pattern of her sandals. She’s lounging blissfully, and he waits for Brian Wilson singing about losing his love for his dreams of the city to slip away before getting up from his seat and bearing down on her. 

He cradles her in his arms and lifts her, her body surprisingly lax. His knees protest as they sink back down into her chair, and though she makes a small noise she relaxes against him just as the song cuts out and the next begins, slow and smooth over a melancholy organ. He can feel her smiling against his neck as she curls into his lap, and she kisses him deeply on the throat, sending a shiver through his body that he’s sure she can feel because her mouth traces his jawline, her teeth grazing against it invitingly.

_I can hear so much in your sighs And I can see so much in your eyes_

_Come close, close your eyes and be still Don't talk, take my hand and let me hear your heartbeat_

He turns his face so their noses bump awkwardly against each other, breath mingling again so he can tell she brushed her teeth. He feels dirty and wretched by comparison, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters in this moment but her quizzical eyes—all pupil in the dark—and the steady pulse beneath his fingertips where his fingers are pressed to her ribs through her shirt.

 _Listen, listen, listen._

It’s like falling with no view of below when he finally kisses her, chasing all the warmth and sweetness. She isn’t gentle now; she’s twining her body to better press her lips to his, pulling his bottom lip between hers. Every kiss she opens his mouth more, until their tongues meet and it’s all over for him. 

_Don't talk, close your eyes and be still Don't talk, put your head on my shoulder_

He may as well have never really kissed before—nothing comparable—but she guides them both. When he pulls back for air she closes in hungrily, exploring his face like he’d done to her earlier. No matter how restrained he could be in that moment she’s chasing him further, her fingernails embedded in his shoulders and her sighs mixing with his breaths. She kisses his scar, traveling up his cheek as his eyes clench and his body quakes. Wetness forms at the corners of his eyes as he holds her and feels too much, so much, that he’d need a lifetime to prepare for, much less a day and a half. He doesn’t know where he ends and she begins. The enfold each other, and she relaxes into his arms and lets him hold until the record ends with the startling noise of the needle ending it’s long loop, pulling them back to real life. But he can’t bring himself to get up, and instead rocks her to sleep in his arms, her nose buried in the collar of his shirt.

He waits until she’s boneless to carry her into the bus. Her body may as well be made of dynamite wrapped in glass for how carefully he places her on his bed when he finds he can’t turn them in the narrow space to put her in the smaller one. He pulls the covers over her, stealing only a hand across her hair to marvel at its softness. When he’s sure she’s deep in unconsciousness he gets up and attempts to wash away the day’s travels with a damp washcloth, changing in the tiny box that serves as a bathroom. 

He swallows his pills with a glass of godawful tap water, thinking of his personal hidden Tiki god in this gimmick of a hotel room. Any cynicism or anger he’d felt that day was a joke compared to the sincerity with which Rey faced things—and surely they were horrible, by the emotions that sometimes changed her entire demeanor. He understands that pain. Even barely knowing her he would burn down a city to keep her from it. 

He folds into the tiny twin bed, above the sheets since he’s not used to the heat here anyway. He reaches his hand across the divide to entwine with hers, watching her sleep for a long time before the medication kicks in, fighting oblivion to have just one more moment with her.

  

* * *

  

Dawn breaks red from the low hills to the east, settling on the great Lavender mine pit and revealing deep gouges and false plateaus formed by man and natural erosion both. Rey drinks the sad excuse for tea provided, having boiled the water in the percolator meant for coffee. It has the taste of it, bitter and metallic, or maybe that’s just the water, considering she hadn’t had any bottled water to use. It had been such a strange transition for her when she’d first moved to the desert to demand filtered or distilled but a few days of tap water had changed her mind. It didn’t taste of earth as much as everything that had leaked into it from poor treatment of the land. 

Ben is dead to the world, otherwise she would have made him get up and into her bed—not with her in it, _of course_. She hasn’t forgotten their stolen kiss in the dark, or the way he’d held her like she could be broken by squeezing too hard. It’s a thought she takes to the empty, shared showers, hands roving with the soap across her body and fueling the errant fantasies of him joining her, doing so much more with his touch than she could with her own.

By the time she’s back in the bus he’s awake, attempting to make coffee in the same way she’d made her tea.

“Morning, sunshine,” she says, toweling off her hair.

“I could use one of those,” he nods.

“Shouldn’t take long to get back into town once the shop gives us a ring,” Rey says brightly, sipping cold tea. “Looks like it’s going to rain today.”

He squints out the window, hunched over as always in the small space. His hair is admittedly lank with the sheen of a few days of touching it, and there’s dark circles under his eyes, but he still looks carved out of marble.

“You should have taken the big bed,” she acknowledges.

He looks at her, nodding slightly. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I’m a light sleeper,” she says. _You’re not_ , is what she thinks. He reads her meaning, sitting down in one of the low chairs near the kitchen. When the percolator stops bubbling she pours him a cup of thick, black coffee and sits down beside him.

“What do you want to do while we wait for the bad news about the Falcon?” he asks.

“We could go on the mine tour,” she says, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. “It’s really fascinating—you go deep underground. They make you wear hard-hats and everything.” The sound he makes is less than enthusiastic as he flips through the records beside him.

“Or we could walk around a bit,” she offers. “Get a proper breakfast and see the town?”

His grunt is a little more amenable this time. He’s reading the liner notes of an album that had caught her eye the night before, but hadn’t recognized. He catches her watching and slips it back on the cabinet-top.

“I guess it’s a little early for anything else,” he says, looking askance with a new kind of nervousness. She closes in on him, tipping his face up so she can plant a kiss on his soft, full lips. There’s something about the light of day and the smell of coffee that makes this gesture more chaste, more meaningful, even.

“That’s for giving me your bed,” she whispers, “you big, dumb moron.” 

Rey backs away before she can crawl into his lap, letting him return to reality and give her a shy but gloating smile in response. 

“I am going to need to see a chiropractor,” he admits, rolling his neck. 

“Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll give you a rub.” It’s delightful seeing him accept her offer to the point that his cheeks flush. “But first, food.”

The sky moves between shadow and sun when they return to town, grabbing breakfast at another greasy spoon before lazily exploring the shops, which are empty on a weekday morning. They find yet another overstuffed antique consignment store to meander through when Rey’s phone rings, finally, and she’s struck by how disappointed she feels knowing it means their adventure is coming to an end. 

“This is Rey,” she says when she answers, going outside to escape the pop country music inside and better hear the caller.

“Rey,” Finn’s voice is always recognizable, and so is the concern. “Where are you?”

“Bisbee. The Falcon broke down. She’s in the shop, but it should be ready soon,” Rey answers automatically and clinically, knowing where this is going and not wanting it to. Finn does not call her, ever. He’s always understood her need to get away when the whim strikes her. 

“Rey, we’ve been worried sick since last night when you didn’t end up coming home.”

“Who’s _we_ , exactly?” she asks.

“Rose, me.”

“If Rose was worried I’d be fending off helicopters and search teams right now,” Rey says. “She also knows to text me in an emergency. So what’s this about?” 

There’s silence on the other end as Finn seems to consider what he’s going to say, the sharp intakes of breath preceding unsaid words finally leading to: “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Finn. Is this because I left with Ben?”

“Are you still with him?” Her friend’s voice is deep and cold, which is not something she’s used to, ever, from him. The worst part is how undeniably _scared_ he sounds, and it needles at her. The silence that follows his question is confirmation enough, so she just sighs.

“I really like you better when you’re my friend, not my dad, Finn.” 

“Rey, please. Just answer me honestly. Has he had a… an episode, yet?” 

She can barely register what he’s said—but once she has the feeling of curiosity is consumed by licks of anger running up through her chest. 

“Episode?” she asks. “What the hell are you going on about?”

“I know it’s none of my business, and I’m not telling you yours, but he better be honest with you about it. He’s not… well.”

“That’s some fucking bullshit, Finn. None of us are well.” Her voice has risen in pitch, and even though the sidewalk is empty she feels naked, so she lowers her voice. “Do you know how awful that is to say about someone? Do you say that about me, too?”

“Okay. Hey. I’m sorry. I’m just looking out for you.”

“I appreciate it, but can you maybe leave him out of it? I can take care of myself, you know.” 

“Listen, I’ve seen this dude try to put a mic stand through a recording booth window. I don’t know what he was on, or not on, but if he starts doing shit like talking to himself or not making sense and getting paranoid, just leave. Call the police if you have to.” 

An arctic-cold chill blows through her. Rey’s seen her share of freakouts and bad trips, but this is different, and the terror in his voice finally makes sense. She hates the fact he told her all the same. She hates this conversation and that on some level there’s truth there in that the first time she’d met him he’d been on a warpath that she couldn’t see. It was also one she couldn’t follow, no matter how much time they had. But she’s already accepted that maybe she doesn’t know him at all, despite the stories. And there’s no one who could stop her from delving deeper but herself. 

“Finn, I love you like a brother. You’re family to me.” Her vision blurs with unshed tears as she chokes out, “but please shut the fuck up.” 

If he hears her he doesn’t stop. “Trust me on this. You don’t know him like I do. I don’t think he’d hurt you physically, but he… he’s hurt himself before,” he says. “You just need to be careful.”

“If I were sick would you say this about me?” Rey asks bitterly. “You wouldn’t treat me kinder, you wouldn’t help me?”

“Of course—that’s not it. You’re a giving person, Rey. I just don’t want to see you get sucked into the bottomless pit of this guy’s world.” The words continue to act as a bellows fanning her anger, and it helps her snap to attention. She looks behind her to make sure Ben isn’t over her shoulder, fingers clenching around her phone. 

“I’m not having this conversation with you right now. Or ever. Other people’s mental illness are not your business, my relationships aren’t your business,” she says coldly. “Goodbye, Finn.”

“Please just let me know when—”

“No, Finn. I’ll see you when I see you.” 

She hangs up, fighting the urge to throw the already-damaged phone against the nearest wall. It takes a few minutes to collect herself, rubbing at her face and fighting the muscles twitching in her jaw, the tic threatening to erupt into further crying. Anger has been replaced by the empty feeling that she couldn’t expect anything from anyone—not Finn, not Ben. Other people, relationships, have always been best dealt with at a safe distance for this very reason. She’ll be damned if she lets someone else’s opinion define her own. 

She’s so preoccupied she nearly collides with Ben as he’s exiting the shop, his hands full with a familiar-shaped case made of black constructed vinyl.

“Is everything alright?” he asks immediately, seeming to crouch down to search her face as she forces a smile.

“Yeah,” she lies, sniffing damningly. “The Falcon isn’t ready yet. They’ll call back a bit later, though.”

He looks relieved besides the concern still tracing his features in knit brows and roving eyes. “This isn’t anything special,” he says, handing her his purchase. “Junk, really. But I thought you’d like it.”

She opens the zipper of the case, pulling out an old ukelele. It still has its meager price tag on it, not surprising considering the last one she’d bought new had been less than the cost of a good meal. Laughter bubbles up in her throat, with a twinge of sadness still holding in her chest.

“It’s perfect,” she says, looking up and managing a more genuine expression of joy. In another lifetime she’d have been upset he bought her something—gifts always rankled her pride and sense of self-sufficiency. But it’s perfect, to her, because its from him.

“I have a favor to ask,” he says after a moment, adjusting the oversized messenger bag on his arm.

“What?” Rey strums the untuned strings, wincing at the sour notes. He doesn’t answer quickly so she looks up to see him running his hands through his hair for the hundredth time, grimacing.

“Would it be too much to ask if we got a hotel room?” he asks. She nearly drops the instrument before he continues, rushing through his thought process.

“This isn’t a proposition,” he takes a step back, hands up. “I just really need a shower.”

“I’d like that, too,” she says before quickly correcting herself, “not a shower, just a place to unwind for a bit.”

“Thank you,” he says. She realizes he’s breathing hard beneath a layer of reservation, as if something is lurking right under the surface. A current passes between them as he leans his head down, mouth opening to say something, just as the first distant roll of thunder reaches them from the gray-green sky. Fat drops of rain begin to splatter on the pavement, filling the air with the smell of ozone and road grime being washed clean.

“Looks like you’re getting your wish one way or another.” Rey says, grateful for the rain to chase them from the street and into their next moment of privacy.

  

* * *

  

_“If I were sick.”_

They make it to their room and he locks himself in the bathroom before he loses it. There’s nothing in reach except a threadbare hotel towel and he grabs onto it in an effort to tear it in two, watching his knuckles turn white over the shallow sink. If he hadn’t gone back into the store to buy her a gift after pausing in the doorway the first time, hearing her on the phone… he doesn’t know what he would have done. Driven a rental car back to Tucson to punch Finn, maybe, but then he’d just be proving his one-time-friend’s point. _Friend?_ Is that really the word one uses for someone forced to spend time with you when they’re being tortured by your company?

He sloughs off his clothes like they’re a second or third skin. It feels like an eternity since he let the hard water of the desert beat the misery out of him and it works as well it had in the last hotel room, before he’d embarked on this reckless adventure. The washcloth is ineffective at scouring away the layers of dirt and shame. He reckons the latter is permanent. 

If this was a different story she’d be dressed in white and tied to railway tracks, and he’d be the cartoon villain keeping her there as the train of reality barrelled forward. He’s been shoving down the inevitability of this conversation since he met her. It’s why he hasn’t kissed a girl since college. It’s why he’s never asked himself why he hadn’t bothered, until now.

He shuts off the water, vividly aware of the cold that sets in afterwards. No one tells you that in the real desert—not like the climate controlled L.A.—they turn everything into a freezer. Even the steam on the mirror is receding by the time he’s stepped out onto the frigid white tile. But with the water off and the rain breaking on the roof of the hotel, there’s no sound but the one drifting through the cracks in the old door. 

It’s sadly offkey, and the dissonance works for what she’s playing. Her strumming rises up to construct a rhythm built into him like the architecture of his body and soul. And still he waits, until he realizes he’s left his bag outside and there’s so many things wrong about leaving this room in this state, but he can’t focus too closely on them when his only refuge from being mostly-naked is a pile of dirty clothing in the corner.

He opens the door slowly. She’s sitting on the king-sized bed, silhouetted against the floral wallpaper with its teal and white stripes, a clashing scarlet carpet beneath her feet. The ukelele in her hands is almost an afterthought as she pauses to take in a sound, then plays, and then pauses again. She’s listening to something on headphones, white cords snaking into her ears but she’s playing along at intervals, as if she’s finally found the point in the song to sing along to.

“Bound by circumstance, or chance.” 

She croons, her voice too beautiful to exist in this hidden place in the middle of nowhere. Her head bobs towards her lap as she plays, strumming rather than picking out a melody. The hairs rise on the back of his neck. He thinks about her request earlier at the front desk of the Copper Queen that they take one of the haunted rooms—just for fun of course. There was John Wayne’s special suite, and the room with the little boy that drowned in the pool. And here on the third floor, maybe the ghost of lady-of-the-night Julia Lowell has come to watch them after all, her hand on his shoulder as she reminds him that sometimes people die for those they love who they can’t be with.

“Let it die,” she sings.

He’s back in a too-big, too-clean space that isn’t his own. His mother and father are right outside the door, doing the things that normal parents do like talk about how long it takes for antipsychotics to kick in for a child in middle school. He waits; he can’t do anything else. Outside the window there’s a gust that blows hard, spattering rain against the window right above the off-white air conditioner roaring as it works against the heat. 

Her words rise above the hum, the feeling imparted in the lyrics he wrote changed by her interpretation. He understands now that even listening to it, she’s playing it for the thousandth time. There’s a difference between drawing down a song you’ve just heard and creating with feeling on a too-small, too-different instrument. And she’s teaching him something just in the way her fingers bend and rise, and the way her shoulder drops when she hits the right chord on the small, wooden body.

“Let them live, tell me a better story.” 

He’s beside her on the bed, trying to listen without ruining the moment, but she notices him immediately, flinching only slightly. He wants to run, but she’s a siren on the rocks and he’s the unlucky sailor called to her shore.

“Tell me that a different world exists.” She sings so softly that only he can hear it, and he leans into it, breath whispering against her ear as he hears the recording he made when he was only twenty-three, now muffled by earpieces and hearing damage. He’d written this song when he was still sure that with enough time and emotion people would understand what he wanted to say. He’d run out of time and people, equally. 

Except her.

Where she’d initially stiffened she’s calm, now, as if sure he won’t do anything to make her regret it. As much as he wishes it to be true, he can’t make promises he was never born to keep. And still, she finishes the song, turning back to her work. Her hair is half-up, and her neck bends in a soft, smooth curve as she taps out the beat with the efficiency of a metronome.

“Across the stars and the spaces in-between, you are waiting for me.”

Their little room fills with their shared voices, again, but he’s only whispering the last lines. When the song ends she removes her headphones, looking back at him. Her stare dips down for a moment, taking in his lack of clothing with the kind of knowing smile that sent ships to Troy. 

“That song was written for my grandmother,” he says, watching her parse his words in the time he could take to reach out for her, should reach out to her. “My grandfather wrote the original, but he never recorded it besides an acoustic version. I had to make up most of the lyrics.”

Rey sets down her forgotten instrument, fingers reaching for his on the worn comforter between them. He moves away, self-conscious as his hands fist in the white towel over his thighs. 

“It was about my parents, for me,” she admits, softly. “I always thought it meant we should appreciate what we have. When we have it.”

“That’s a better way to see it,” he says. He pulls away self-consciously to pick up the travel bag he’d forgotten outside the bathroom, closing the door behind him with a heavy heart. He can only meet her sorrowful eyes with the glazed-over feeling that he has to let her go before this even begins. If she’s his muse, now, at least she looks defeated.

He takes his time in the bathroom, willing his flesh to split with each pass of the razor over his neck as he shaves methodically. The exterior room is silent, and each second is another weight added to the feeling like he’s lost the contest of strength between them. When he re-enters the room, he’s fully dressed and calm despite his heart thudding in his chest. And she’s waiting, at the window, arms wrapped around her middle to hold herself tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ Ginger ale kisses are my not-so-subtle homage to the best of the Southwestern gothic gritty modern AUs, ["Only If You Want To"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12557112) (a Las Vegas-based hitman/private detective vs. drug-running bartender fic) by the extremely talented [@violetwilson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violetwilson/pseuds/Violetwilson). I can't believe we're coming to a close on both this fic and "Obituary". She's one of my favorite writers in this fandom and super supportive, and I am grateful for her inspiring me to write this.
> 
> \+ Yes, we also have a Solo reference in here. Didn't love the film but it was enjoyable, and the women characters were amazing despite having so little of the spotlight. 
> 
> \+ [Bisbee was the last place I visited when I left Arizona in 2011, and I miss it so much.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisbee,_Arizona)
> 
> \+ I've stayed in the yacht at [the Shady Dell](http://theshadydell.com/) (it was worth it), but never ate at Dot's Diner so artistic liberties were had. 
> 
> \+ The record Rey plays is, of course, [The Beach Boy's _Pet Sounds_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYBlfpCVHBo). My roommate was the one to give me the idea of using ["Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gikGLzkKElw) because of how absolutely perfect and romantic it is. 
> 
> \+ I apologize if I made Finn sound ableist in any way, he is not and this convo will be addressed later. He's more worried for Rey and having difficulty expressing himself outside of a personal, face-to-face conversation.
> 
> \+ The [Copper Queen](http://www.copperqueen.com/) in Bisbee is a great hotel, and haunted even. [ Julia Lowell is my favorite of the ghosts. ](https://historywitch.com/tag/julia-lowell/)


	5. blue day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben becomes a jukebox hero. This fic earns its rating (spoiler alert: sex will be had in this fic).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was [blessed by @selunchen with chapter 2 Spanish lullaby feels](https://selunchen.tumblr.com/post/174307499822/brillante-como-el-espejo-alumbra-la-luna-su) (still planning a Foreigner reference since Rey has their poster), @kayurka and @theladyvalkyriesart swooped in with these amazing gifts. Behold:
> 
> [@kayurka's perfect album cover for Ben and Rey's acoustic couple's project (open mic night is a thing with these two, I promise, as well as this image)](https://kayurka.tumblr.com/post/174661317269/gimme-sympathy-by-ashesforfoxes)  
> [@theladyvalkyriesart with the longing look that comes from realizing the girl of your dreams owns both your grandfather's guitar and your soul](http://theladyvalkyrieskyeart.tumblr.com/post/174809417874/because-the-night-belongs-to-lovers-because-the) . . . the leather jacket and Patti Smith are also now canon, of course.
> 
> Thank you so much. I know I have a tendency to gush but I don't feel worthy and I really appreciate the time you spend to craft something that exists in my small, weird little world. Thank you to everyone who's made this collaborative because I really, really, needed that in my life and I am so grateful for it even if I overstretch myself on my ability to respond. 
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter took so long to post: it was incredibly difficult to write.

“What are you afraid of, Ben?” she asks, not looking at him. She’s vibrating with that feeling like she’s a flywheel that will break apart with the right push to unbalance it. The dampness on her neck from his face is still there, evaporating, but she can’t bring herself to smooth it away.

“Everything.” He crosses the room to stand beside her, looking out at the gloomy day past the translucent drapes. His bag is slung over his shoulder, and he’s dressed as if he’s going to leave the hotel and brave the storm just to get away from her. 

“You’re afraid of me?” 

“Hurting you, yes,” he says, voice cracking. 

“Did you ever think that protecting me might be treating me like a child? Like I’m weak?” Rey says bitterly, turning to look at him. 

He’s speechless, mouth opening as his eyes dart away and settle on the bed.

She knew he was too embarrassed to stay sitting beside her in just a towel and still she can’t get the image of his lean, pale body out of her mind. His damp hair and freshly-shaved face make her want to tear off his clothing and start over again. She regrets not touching him, comforting him when the look of faraway despair had settled over his features like a veil. 

“I want you, Ben,” she says, drawing nearer, tilting her chin up defiantly. “You want me. Why does that have to be so hard?”

“I don’t want something temporary,” he says. “You were right that I can only offer you temporary.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” she answers immediately. When she raises her hand to his right cheek, he winces slightly beneath her touch.

“Everything good always is.” His stare is far away. “Don’t you know something about losing the people you thought loved you?”

Rey’s chest aches at the words, remembering a night on the banks of a man-made lake, brittle fish bones crunching beneath her jelly sandals as the flashing blue and red lights reflected off gentle waves pushing dead fish onto the shore. That had been when they’d taken her away from the last people she’d ever loved. She had never really let herself care about anything or anyone that deeply again, regardless of holding onto the sliver of the hope that it might be possible.

“You still have them,” she says, hand falling down. “You never fought to get them back.”

“You don’t know—”

“I know you had a family who loved you. Who still loves you. You can’t keep running from the people that care about you.” Rey’s voice grows louder, unleashing the frustration she’d bottled up earlier. 

“I’m not running.” His voice has changed and she looks up to see the vulnerability has been replaced by a hardened mask. 

“You can move past the bad things that happened to you. But you can’t do it alone.”

He holds his breath, looking like he’s going to turn blue waiting for her to concede, and still she stubbornly waits for him to continue. He’s being melodramatic, as usual. They’d had so many standoffs that she expects them now, because if there’s one one true commonality between them it’s their pride.

“Not this thing,” he says. He rights the curtains to hide the day before walking towards the door. “Trust me.”

She follows him, dogged.

“I _know_ , Ben.” The words escape her, replaced by a metric ton of regret when he stops in his tracks. She’s sure he’ll be confused—instead he’s staring at the floor, head low, and it hits her then that he’d heard her on the phone. Maybe not all of it, surely enough.

“You know that I’m a monster,” he says, back still turned to her.

“No,” she says, gripping him around the chest and resting her head beneath the place where his shoulder blades meet. It’s an intimate gesture, one she doesn’t question for a moment even as Finn’s words cycle through her thoughts. “You just think you are.”

He turns slowly, not trying to leave her embrace, and she buries herself in his clean, warm presence, her ear at his breastbone to listen to the methodical sound of his heartbeat underneath. He rests his chin on the top of her head, hands on her shoulders. 

“You don’t know,” he says, the words seeming to come from far inside him. 

“Then tell me. Stop being so goddamn cryptic.” She looks up at him, fighting between the disparate urge to kiss him and shake him into action. He stares into her eyes for a while, small jags of emotion emerging in the subtle changes in his face.

“It’s a long story. I stopped really telling it the last time I went to rehab, and when I found a psychiatrist who didn’t ask questions and prescribed what I needed. They don’t tell you that some things can’t be fixed with pills,” he says.

“Some things can’t be fixed, they can only be helped,” she pleads. “You have to be open to it.”

He nods, swallowing. “Let’s talk about being ‘open to it’ when I’ve told you about it. Not now.”

“I’m not leaving this room until you talk to me about it,”

Ben sighs, grip tightening on the strap of his bag. “This is not the best time, Rey”

“Why?” Her voice has gotten high-pitched, but she can’t keep it down. “Don’t you trust anyone?”

“No.” He laughs for the first time in her recent memory. “I really don’t.”

“You’re not alone,” she says, mouth staying parted. Her body shifts against him, pressing into his. For a moment she sees when the spark lights behind his eyes, the one she’s been hunting down in all their time together. It disappears when he pulls away, his jaw working. 

“I want to be.” 

The belt holding that flywheel breaks, and she’s shaking. So far she’s been alright, knowing this will end. That he’s using an excuse to be distant when they’d been that close . . . that’s the thing that hurts. Pain never lasts long with her, anyway. It’s always going to be anger that holds her in its iron grip when the world starts rotating in a different direction. People leaving is nothing new. Holding onto them before they’re really, truly gone is the most important thing. 

“That’s such bullshit,” Rey slams her palm against his chest. “You need to try. No one is going to fucking save you if you don’t help yourself.”

He flinches, moving away from her. She goes lax as their bodies separate.

“I don’t want to fight about this.”

“Coward,” Rey snaps, tears filming her vision.

His shoulders stiffen beneath his jacket, head bent. 

“You’re only the monster you want to be,” she says.

“I am.” It’s so soft the rain almost drowns it.

He leaves just as quietly, the door clicking shut with a waft of musty, old-house air from the hallway outside. The sound cuts through the strings holding her in place and she collapses onto the bed, sobbing into her hands. 

 

* * *

 

The bartender pours him an Old Fashioned with the silent affirmation that tells him that the last few hours are written all over his face. He avoids eye contact, unable to hide any of it. 

It’s too early yet for live music in the saloon, and the place is empty as would be expected on a Monday afternoon besides a few regulars. He turns bodily away from the televisions hanging in places, staring instead at his phone and the queue of notifications and texts and emails that have begun to accumulate in his absence and silence. He doesn’t have the energy to answer any of them, shooting off a text to Sloane to tell her he’ll be in LA by tomorrow night. They’ll have to reschedule whatever press they’d arranged for their return but it means nothing to him. He hadn’t worked his whole life to not to be a pain in the ass when he wants to be. It’s practically written into his contract.

“You don’t get the bar.” The voice behind him is rigid, cold and sharp. He turns to find Rey, dressed in a slightly-wrinkled shirt dress. It’s the kind of thing that would be comfortable for a day hike, except with her hair up and her eyes darkened with makeup she looks ready for whatever trouble she could get into in this silly excuse for a tourist town. If she wanted to make him ache, it works.

“By all means,” he waves to the empty line of barstools beside him. “I think it’s big enough for the two of us.”

Her jaw tightens in anger. He’s sure she’d pull him out of his seat if she could. Instead she orders a Bombay Sapphire and tonic and sits beside him.

“The shop called. The Falcon is ready when we are.” Rey takes a deep swallow, obviously not intending to drive anytime soon. He feels a deep sense of pity watching her perform the same actions he came down here to accomplish—somehow hoping he’d write away the tension of the last few hours.

“I didn’t think you drank,” he says, because if he’s already burnt down any chance of salvaging this, so he may as well wreck the whole thing.

“I’m on vacation,” she says acerbically, making a face. “What else is there to do, anyway?”

He opens his mouth and then closes it, silenced. They sit together, rigid and facing away, the atmosphere strained as the TV spews commercial after commercial over the inaudible music playing from a jukebox in the corner. The bartender gives them a wide berth.

“Am I allowed to talk?” he asks once the air is so thick between them it’s a wonder he can breathe.

“Only if I’m allowed to tell you to shut the fuck up,” Rey bites back. 

“Fair enough,” he swallows. “I’ll try to keep it light.”

“Forgive me for not believing you,” she says before taking another drink. “What do we even talk about then.”

“We could pretend we just met,” he offers. 

“That should be easy,” she says, sarcasm edging her words. “Do you always play games with girls you’ve just met, Mr.—who are you again?”

“You always this nice to strangers?”

“We haven’t even begun.” She finishes her drink and orders another one immediately. Ben raises his finger, indicating he’ll match her, when the bartender notices their empties.

“What’s a beautiful girl like you doing in a shit-hole like this?” he tries. 

“My van broke down,” she fiddles with the little plastic sword spearing her lime.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I clean up messes made by asshole musicians.” Rey relaxes a bit and slows down on her second drink, sipping.

“Funny, I’m an asshole musician,” he says.

“Oh, I can tell.” She rotates in her seat to mirror him finally, fingers tapping against the shiny bartop. “And what brings a rock star to the middle of nowhere?”

“I met a girl.”

“Lucky her.” She crosses her legs, showing off knobby knees and combat boots crusted in dirt as a contrast to the athletic lines of her legs. 

“Lucky me. I think she might be regretting it, though.”

“Did you break her heart yet?”

“Working on it,” he jokes, swirling the orange peel curled in his whiskey. 

When she doesn’t respond immediately he looks at her, his thoughts turning sluggish at her guarded expression. From the first moment they met she’s had trouble staying angry at him, something holding her back. If it’s even half of what he feels he can’t blame her. He almost wishes she’d stay bitter; it’s so much easier to see her raging at him than in pain. 

“This is ridiculous,” he chokes out. 

“You’re telling me,” she mutters.

“I’m sorry, Rey,” he finds himself saying. Her eyes snap back to him, justifiably unconvinced. “I have no idea what I’m doing. The only people who I spend time with are assholes. It makes it easier.”

“That’s not an excuse,“ she says, but her tone is gentler. “Being an antisocial shithead is not a replacement for a personality, you know.”

“I know,” he bows his head in agreement.

“I didn’t want things to get so heavy this trip, anyway,” Rey says. “I just enjoyed spending time with you. You’re the one who . . . ” she drifts off, shrugging. “Here’s to, again, forgetting reality for a day or two.” Rey cheers him with mostly ice.

 _It was more than that for me,_ he thinks, clinking her glass in return.

“Do you want me to drive?” Ben asks, knowing the trip back to the mechanic shop will at least burn something of the liquor currently relaxing his limbs and washing away some of the wounds still freshly bleeding. 

“I didn’t want to leave just yet.” Rey shakes her head, hoop earrings swinging a little wildly. “If you need to get back I won’t hold you hostage.”

“You can kidnap me anyday,” he blurts out. She gives him a look between exasperation and mutual embarrassment.

“Smooth, Solo.” Rey rummages through her purse—he’s noticed over the trip that it may as well have been stolen from Mary Poppins, and its contents are just as mysterious—but all she removes from it are her keys with their collection of souvenir keychains. She sets them on the bar counter, keeping her hand on top of the small pile. 

“I’ll give you these on one condition,” she says, “you have to play me the perfect song.”

He squints at her, confused, until she nods towards the far side of the room and the Wurlitzer-style jukebox, with its flashy colors, bubblers, and rotating internal lighting. Even from here he can tell its a newer CD model; at least he’s not going to lack for options.

“Any preference?” He takes the bait.

“You’ll know,” she says. She turns back to the bartender, sliding a few crumpled dollar bills forward. “Can we get another round and some quarters?”

Fresh drink and coins in possession, he braves the Sisyphean task set before him. He can’t pick anything too depressing, or too loud. Nothing _too_ confessional, or will sink him further from her good graces. As expected, the selection skews towards honkytonk. He’d rather take his chances hitchhiking than listen through another song about crying into beer or pining over men gone astray, so he takes his time picking through the options, queueing up each track with the tentative push of a button. 

He can feel her gaze like a hand on his shoulder, and he resists turning around to look back and break that warm feeling. Women have looked at him like that before but Rey is different. There’s both a knowing and a curiosity in her hazel eyes that sends his brain into the fascinating depths of depravity—thoughts like would she still look at him like that if he was on his knees in front of her. He’d gotten so used to having little-to-no sex drive that having it kicked back into gear has altered his consciousness, making him hyper-aware of every moment of contact, every glance. He may as well be playing with dynamite in one hand and a blowtorch in the other for what he knows what to do with it.

Once he’s finally narrowed down all several hundred CDs to ten “perfect” songs he rejoins her at the bar. The dimples in her cheeks are showing despite her scowling. It’s his favorite iteration of her non-smile, close-mouthed and yet still beaming. It reminds him of his mother—the way she used to pretend to be angry after a heartfelt apology and a kiss on the cheek. Rey cocks her head to hear the music just as it starts flowing up and over the murmur from the television

_She's not a girl who misses much, she's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane._

“Nice,” she says, nonplussed.

“This isn’t the perfect song,” he says. “I saved that one for last.”

She hides whatever feeling his words elicit. Her eyes, darker for being mostly pupil, hold his until he’s forced to look away. She sees too much; she’s always looking for something and he feels lucky she found it somewhere in his vicinity. He knows he’ll never stop feeling enamored with her, and also that he’ll never tell her. Those kinds of feelings are best kept locked safely away where time and distance can erode them into dust.

Heart’s “Crazy on You” begins after the Beatles, and he watches every moment of her reaction, from the way she looks at the jukebox like its a traitor to the way her eyes meet his when Nancy Wilson’s acoustic breakdown rises up into Ann’s powerful vocals. 

“Isn’t this a little on the nose?” she asks as she discards her drink, her hands running up and down her thighs.

“I do have a sense of humor, you know,” he says. The Wilson sisters dig deep into one of their most heartfelt numbers, flowing from an acoustic jam into a sweeping progressive number with drums and synths. Rey’s foot is tapping against the lowest rung of the barstool, although her body is still mostly tense, her eyes examining the grain in the wood in front of her. 

_I was a willow last night in my dream_  
_I bent down over a clear running stream_  
_Sang you the song that I heard up above_  
_And you kept me alive with your sweet flowing love_

He doesn’t speak anymore as they absorb the song together, carefully lifting their drinks at mismatched, unsteady intervals. She turns on her seat to knock her glass against his again, coming dangerously close to brushing against his arm, his fingers. 

“That was better,” she says, just as Led Zeppelin’s “That’s The Way” comes on and whatever fleeting comfort she’d had is chased away by the opening lyrics.

 _I don't know how I'm gonna tell you_  
_I can't play with you no more_  
_I don't know how I'm gonna do what mama told me_

“Shots fired,” she says, playing with her rabbit-foot keychain absentmindedly.

“I’m not really aiming.” He takes a drink to steady himself, feeling his cheeks burn. The truth was he’d forgotten the lyrics. He knows most of these songs by heart and even then he couldn’t recall what they were trying to say, even if a gun had been pointed at his head.

“For the record, my favorite on _Three_ is ‘Gallow’s Pole’,” she says. “You should pick less gloomy songs.”

“I would have guessed your favorite was ‘Immigrant Song’.” His voice is so wry he needs to take another drink to mellow it. “Aren’t you at least thankful I didn’t play ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’?”

“It’s one of the best blues guitar solos Jimmy Page ever played,” she shrugs off the casual mention of the capital-L-word, which makes a little of the bile rising in his throat sink back down into his stomach. There’s no way to get through even a hundred songs without stumbling on it, and if he’s going to say it aloud, even by proxy . . . 

“It’s seven minutes long,” he says. If she gets the joke, it doesn’t register in her blank expression. He hopes she’s just lost in the music. “I didn’t think you wanted to stay too long.”

 _Know it sounds funny but, I just can't stand the pain_  
_Girl, I'm leaving you tomorrow_  
_Seems to me girl you know I've done all I can_  
_You see I begged, stole, and I borrowed_

Lionel Ritchie’s voice tells his woman it’s over, that he wants to be free, and his mortification grows as he realizes that even such a lively song has driven her past the point of being humored and into dismay.

“You’re a twat, Ben.” The sentiment doesn’t extend far past the words, though he can see her lashes close around drops of moisture and he knows this time he’d struck a blow, another one he’d had no intention of landing.

He reaches across the bartop to grab her hand in his, marveling at the smoothness of it. Whenever he touches her, she holds still. He can’t blame her. He rolls the pad of his thumb over her knuckles and slides it under her fingers, each shallow fissure and callus another weapon against the world. He has them, too.

“I’m sorry, Rey,” he says for the infinite time. “I think I say stupid shit just to get you to insult me.” He wants to tell her he likes it. He suspects she already knows. “It’s better than nothing.”

Ben brings his other hand up to massage her fingers. She’s staring at her hand wrapped in his, her shoulders going up and down almost comically as she breathes in with each rotation of his thumb over the back of her hand. The place between her index and middle fingers is like silk, metacarpal bones moving just beneath the crisscross-lined surface of her skin.

The song change provides an opportunity for her to pull away, but she doesn’t, her fingers going limp as he works each digit the way he’d once hoped someone would do for him after a brutal recording session, after multiple incidences of damaged knuckles from whatever new surface he’d taken out his aggression upon. 

“You had the entirety of Black Sabbath’s _Master of Reality_ and you picked the acoustic song? You really are a romantic,” she says, wiping at her face. 

“Every mixtape needs a breather,” he says, still holding onto her.

She doesn’t laugh, curling her fingers into his grip in an almost familial way. It’s like he’s a small child she’s reassuring when their favorite toy has broken.

“Thanks for spending time with me,” he says. “I know I’m hard to swallow.”

“You’re the worst at double _entendre_. Freud would have had a field day.”

“Is it still Freudian if I’m thinking it consciously?”

That earns him a laugh that isn’t choked with tears, and he lets her go so they can ignore the world around them as people start to filter into the bar. The regulars get their drinks and the bartender checks on on them from time to time. The soundtrack continues with Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing” until their next order—they both switch to cheap beers. He gets a laugh out of her when The Byrds “Cowgirl in the Sand” plays next (his one concession for their surroundings), and they lose themselves in a discussion about the merits of harmonica use.

“You only have a few songs left,” Rey says, toying with her dark brown bottle.

“Not sure I’m ready to drive,” he counters. “You still owe me a song. Or ten.”

She drops her drink with a heavy _thunk_ against the bartop. 

“The Falcon has a perfectly working tape deck,” she says, deflecting.

“I don’t want to kiss you in the Falcon.” Ben has just stepped off the platform into the void below. Her face processes everything, still steely despite the softening that had set in with his touch. 

“What makes you think I’ll let you?” she asks, still not meeting his eyes. He can see the color in her cheeks and that lip bite she does when she’s not conscious of it. Something coils in his chest, slinking down lower with each crisp snap of the hi-hat.

“When I first met you, I could tell you hated me,” he says.

“I didn’t hate—”

“I don’t blame you.” He tips his beer back as his eyes grab onto the TV and the inanity of the local weather before he allows himself to look back at her. “The point it is, you knew me. And I have the weird feeling like you’ve always known me.”

He can tell she’s reticent to believe anything he’s saying, and he’s not trying to convince her at this point. He just wants to see that dimple again—the soft smile telegraphing the comfort of being appreciated and safe.

“On any given day I could meet someone who would claim to know me, but I’ve never looked at them and seen my life flash before my eyes like I did with you,” he says. “You scare me shitless.” Her eyes flick back to him, wide, turning the throttle on his confession. “Nothing escapes you. And I can’t lie to you, ever. I’m an ant under a magnifying glass when you’re around.”

Rey nods, finally smiling even if it’s distant. “I think I know how you feel.”

“So if I can’t talk about something with you, it’s not because I don’t want to. I want to. It’s that fear of fucking up overwrites everything.”

She places a hand on his knee, giving him the literal manifestation of what he’d just told her. 

“What’s this?” she cocks her head to the side. “I feel like I’ve heard it before.”

 _Hello my love, I heard a kiss from you_  
_Red magic satin playing near, too_  
_All through the morning rain I gaze, the sun doesn't shine_  
_Rainbows and waterfalls run through my mind_

He waits until the chorus, enjoying her deciphering a song she’d probably heard sampled a hundred times but has no reference for outside of others. 

“It’s Shuggie Otis’ ‘Strawberry Letter 23’,” he says.

“I like it,” she says, voice slurring slightly. “What’s it about?”

“Love letters, I think,” he says—and he’s right there with her as her head dips to the beat, a smile tugging her lips. The room they’re in has disappeared entirely and the only thing existing within it is within arm’s reach, just as nebulous as the flicker of peace in his mind. 

“How many do you get?” Rey laughs. “Love letters, that is. Being famous, and all.”

“No idea,” he shrugs. “Do you think I could write you one?”

After the shock wears away her white teeth flash behind a shy smile, shaking her head. 

“No one’s ever written me a letter before,” she says softly. “No permanent home, and all.”

“It will be a real one, paper and pen, bad poetry, the works,” he says. “From your biggest fan.”

She opens her mouth and he can imagine all the things she might tell him: he’s drunk, he’s being incredibly cheesy and sentimental, that he’ll never really write her a letter. All of these might be true, in some sense, but he spares her the need to bring them back down to earth and stands up, offering her his hand. Even seated on the tall stool she’s far enough from eye level so her head bobs comically as she cranes her neck to look up at him and then back down at his invitation.

“What’s this?”

“Don’t I get a dance for the perfect song?”

“We have an audience,” she says quickly.

“When did that ever bother you?” he asks, letting the Cheshire grin threatening to split his cheeks finally spill across his face.

She hesitates, eyes darting past him. She gets up to move to the jukebox, the coin purse she’s pulled from her magical handbag in hand. He follows her, held by an invisible, short chain even as she stands in front of the archaic machine and slots her quarters in, completely ignoring the song that’s playing in her haste to pluck the ones she wants to hear out of it.

“Rey, we can go now,” he says. The light in front of her is pink-gold in the moment, illuminating her perfect cheekbones and the flyaway hairs rising up from her scalp. She slows, maybe coming up for air like he feels he already has, letting the perfectly-contained world of sound in front of them envelope her.

 _There she sits her hands are held_  
_Tight around her glass_  
_She only needs to be alone_  
_She knows this mood will pass_  
_To realize that she was strong_  
_And he too weak to stay_  
_And to realize that she is better off this way_

She doesn’t answer, maybe because it’s The Zombies or because it’s 1968’s _Odessey and the Oracle_ , or because she knows it intimately. He’d questioned every press of the smoke-yellowed, numerical keys as he’d punched the song in. And yet right now, right here, it seems to work. It’s clear that he’d done well when her arms reach around to hold him for the second time that day. His hands clutch at her waist, going numb as he feels her body shake. 

_Brief candles in her mind_  
_Bright and tiny gems of memory_  
_Brief candles burn so fine_  
_Leaves a light inside where she can see_

“You know they broke up before they even released this album,” she says into his chest, her breath flagging his shirt. “Someone gave me their original mono pressing in and said it was worth a hundred quid.”

“I hid it under my mattress,” she sniffs. “Still sold it. It wasn’t worth that much.”

 _His alone girl fades away_  
_Left out on a limb_  
_Finds he needs her more because_  
_She's no more need for him_  


Her body, which has been a fine painting only to be viewed at a respectable distance, is pressed into every nook and crevice of his own. Each beat brings it closer until they are spiraling into one another within a three-foot radius, oblivious to the world around them. It should have been like this from the beginning, he thinks. He should never have let her go.

 _He understood so very well_  
_The things she had to say_  
_Soon he'll understand that he is better off this way_

“Perfect song?” she asks, leaving streaks of mascara on his gray shirt, right over his heart. “You win, I guess.”

“I think you lost count,” he replies, just about the time that Velvet Underground’s “I’m Beginning to See The Light” starts to play. He unwinds from her to take her hands in his own, living for the look of elation that’s won out over the sadness as she joins him. 

Their first dance is hopelessly awkward, made worse by bad footing and one too many drinks. Their boots collide with each other as they shuffle across the faded carpet. She crumples into laughter the first time they miss their beat and almost knock each other over in the resulting tangle of limbs. She holds on for dear life after that. At least he knows she’ll dance with him if the song is right. Maybe even if it isn’t.

“You want to walk back to the shop and kill this buzz with me?” he asks when their song finally fades to the repeating mantra of _how does it feel to be loved?_

“Sure,” she whispers into his neck, nose burying into his skin to the point that electricity crackles up into his head. “My playlist is already queued.”

“A little while longer, then,” he says into her hair, the joy in his chest threatening to spill out and burn away the darkness encroaching as their last day together slips away.

 

* * *

 

Where Janis Joplin’s “Get It While You Can” and Nina Simone’s “I Want a Little Sugar In My Bowl” can’t stir him into action, Aerosmith’s “Big Ten Inch Record” makes him pick up and run. He pulls her out of the saloon into the quiet lobby. She doesn’t lament the fact that they never got to the point where she was going to subject the barflies to Dio.

“My bag is still in the room, Ben,” she chides when he heads towards the front desk. 

“Okay,” he says, following her when she leads him up the staircase with its dark, touch-polished wood. 

It’s been years since she’s had more than a few drinks in one sitting, and still, she knows exactly what to expect. Time moves in flashpoint, each moment truncated and lacking in the meaning and importance a sober person might ascribe to it. At least she can still feel. It comes flooding in, all at once, as they make their way to the third floor. They’re staying in a haunted house, by all rights. She’d lived almost fifteen years in a place where recent age was defined by whether or not a building had survived the Great Fire of 1666. America doesn’t have a history, but when it does somehow it’s always strange and violent as if they’re the only kind of stories to be told in this stretched-out land.

The narrow hallway at the top of the stairs is empty, and now that they’re finally alone she jumps him. He’s been wary of breaking her every time he even breathes in her direction, so there’s no same compunction on Rey’s part when she attacks him at the top of the stairs. She has to rise to the very tips of her toes to make full contact with his mouth, hands tugging at his jacket, and his lips part immediately to allow her tongue to dart against his own. When he kisses her it’s with the same hesitation, and she responds by biting the thickness of his lower lip hard enough to leave a bruise. 

They make it across the corridor to their room just a few doors off, and light spills across the carpet at their feet as he looks up with a sense of wonder, maybe surprised that the key worked the first time, or that they’re back where they started in the complete inversion of where they’d been that morning. 

She’ll never forgive him, for that, she thinks, even as she latches the door behind them, dropping her keys and purse immediately. The lock’s click is still in the air when they kiss again and nothing else exists except the very solid and real person in her arms. Each tug of her grip on his shirt brings him closer to the shattering sensation in her body, and she wishes he’d hold her so he could keep that together, too.

When her attempts to get him to stoop down to her level fail, he responds by lifting her up, hoisting her legs around his hips and carefully pushing her into the opposite wall so that they’re at eye level finally. Rey’s mind is left behind as her heart races into overdrive and all the need in her belly sweeps lower. His swollen lips are right where she wanted them, and he brushes them against hers, tongue sweeping across her teeth when she forgets that they’re kissing now—still drowning in his half-lidded eyes. 

The discomfort of having her back pressed into a hard surface is erased by Ben’s body pressed into hers, the front of his jeans digging into her bare thighs and underwear. She whimpers as he presses into her, alternating between kissing her neck and mouth before he buries his face at the top of her chest, his hands supporting her weight. 

“Oh god fuck me like this,” she breathes, hands gripping his shoulders to help support her body; she may as well be made of air the way he carries her.

“This?” he asks, grinding into her. She can feel his hardness through his jeans and the suspense is no longer killing her—instead it’s making her entire body flush and cry out. Warmth flares in her groin and she involuntarily tightens inside with the tensing of her legs. His hips, the narrowest point of his body, are still too wide to wrap her thighs around completely without being uncomfortable so she relaxes, pushing against the wall to angle herself against him.

“We’re not rushing this,” he whispers. One huge hand digs into her backside, fingertips slipping beneath the edges of her underwear as his other arm supports her torso.

“Who said anything about rushing?” she whines into his neck, unable to protest further as he pulls her from the wall and carries her to the bed.

Everything is half-lit with the receding thunderstorm outside and she can barely register her surroundings. Her head is swimming as he drops her on the bed and follows to meet her mouth again, body poised too high above hers to make contact. She raises her hips to meet his, earning a splayed hand on her belly through the thin fabric of her dress. 

“Hold still.” He breaks their kiss to shift back onto his knees, his thighs pinning her where they’re both sinking into the mattress with his weight.

“Are you sure you’re not drunk,” she groans.

He stops unbuttoning her clothing, hands resting on her collarbones. “No, are you?”

Rey is aching and spinning with desire, but she’s at least _mostly_ sober. She shakes her head, hands coming up to help him remove his jacket and t-shirt. When it’s off she bends up to touch him, marveling at the huge swath of pale skin that is his naked chest, marked by the brown dots of freckles and grayish scar tissue.

There are three more scars than she remembers: on his right torso, his left shoulder, his abdomen. They’re puckered like the stitches hadn’t held closed, the damage more severe than the windscreen glass she knows was responsible for the permanent line from his shoulder to his face. It really should have killed him for how close that cut came to the artery in his neck, the deep line wrapping down to bisect his right pectoral muscle. 

There’s a difference between reading about an event and feeling the aftereffects so closely. She remembers the article, vividly—the rough, early-internet images of a wrecked, black BMW beneath unscathed palm trees and the light pole it had wrapped around. Rey is overwhelmed by the desire to kiss the places she thinks he needs it most. Her lips part as she trails her mouth across each firm shoulder, pausing to run a tongue across his clavicle and conjuring up the first of many rumbling groans. Ben doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands as her lips purse against his skin, her tongue darting out to travel. He settles on tracing up and down her bare arms with his fingertips until they’re both covered entirely in gooseflesh.

“Do you feel it?” he asks.

Rey doesn’t know what he’s talking about, continuing to revel in his body until it’s clear he isn’t responding, just holding still.

“Could you let me up?” she asks after a moment, aware all too suddenly that her legs are going numb and her spine is not made to stretch this way. He sits back to relieve the pressure but he doesn’t let her go, eyes fixed on a place over her shoulder.

“What? Are you alright?” she asks, her body going rigid beneath him. “Ben?”

He draws back, standing up off the bed in a movement so rapid that it makes her vision double.

“Yes,” he says, shaking it off. “I’m sorry. Just overwhelmed.”

“We’re moving fast,” she admits, instantly self-conscious.

“It’s alright,” he says. For the second time today, this awful room is closing in on her: the musty smell, the rain outside a roar in how it fills up the silence. 

“I’m here.” He’s on on the bed beside her, his hand trailing up her torso to cup her face. Her life has been a series of holding gazes that were wrong, or not enough. His eyes are a drug in how much they contain both, and everything else. She wants to sink deeper, etching every moment of his face into her long-term memory. She knows eventually he’ll leave, but he can’t take away this away from her.

“I know,” she says, her leg encircling his as she holds him tight. “I’m here, too.” 

“I want to tell you,” he says to the tight skin on her forehead, ruffling her hair with each word.

“I’ll still be here when the time is right. We don’t need to talk now.” Rey kisses his throat and the moving muscles beneath. “I’ll still be here in the morning.” 

There’s no more words as they lose time completely to wandering mouths and hands. Going slow isn’t unpleasant, it just is. She doesn’t have to fight to feel pleasure in the act like she has with faceless men in the past, she can just be. It makes her burn brighter where before she’d already have been ash. She’s never kissed anyone for as long or as passionately, the skin on her chin going raw with each pass of the stubble already growing on his jaw. 

It doesn’t take her long to learn his erogenous zones—all of them unexpected. He shudders and inhales sharply every time she nips at his perfect nose or her tongue trails across the place where his earlobe meets his neck. He finally helps her out of her dress, and a certain kind of closure settles in as she shuffles out of the gray fabric. She hasn’t even taken off her boots, yet, so occupies her time unlacing them. She’s left in her underwear, vulnerable but ready, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he says still laying beside her. “Can I touch you?”

“You shouldn’t ask, it kind of ruins it.” She runs a hand down his chest, finding his belt and unfastening it before he can react. He stops her by sitting up and latching onto her breast with his mouth, through the thin cups of her bra. Now she’s the inarticulate one as his tongue dampens the sheer fabric, his teeth grasping her hardening nipple.

“Oh shit,” she says, holding him by his head as he pushes aside one strap and sucks deeply at the pebbled skin, rough fingertips caressing the underside of her breast and making her feel craven in the desire to have him stay there forever. He nuzzles and kisses his way to the other, working at the skin with his tongue until she’s heaving sighs into his thick, raven hair. She finally unclasps her bra for him, the stupid thing getting in the way of contact as he makes a point of discovering new territory by degrees. 

She expects when he pushes the meat of her breasts together to kiss and suck at every inch, but not when he abandons them to trail kisses down her abdomen. She fights to sit up and kiss him and he pushes back—his hand splayed out on her belly yet again as his mouth finds her damp underwear and closes over the folds beneath. His tongue is laving through the sheer fabric, making it damper than it was before, and she cries out at the sensation. 

“Ben,” she begs as his tongue roughly digs into the layer of lycra. “You can take them off.”

His fingers hook into the fabric, but at the sides, not the top. He pushes aside her panties and she has only a moment of coldness on her swollen labia before it’s replaced with the warmth of his mouth.

“Oh, fuck,” she says aloud, biting back a stream of curses. He teases her with his tongue and fingers so large she has to steel herself the first time he pushes against the entrance of her sex. Then he’s stretching her with his hand, working each digit in carefully and slowly as outside he swipes at her most sensitive places like a cat cleaning its paw. He finally strips her panties off, after even more begging.

“Come for me, please.” This time his asking doesn’t remind her of having to lead him by the hand down the road; it’s a prayer. She tightens around his fingers, back arching off the bed, willing him in her mind to fuck her deeper, stronger. He does without asking—his unused hand digging into her hip and lifting her up to his mouth to suck at her clit until her soft cries become shouts that threaten to reveal them to the world. 

He doesn’t have to ask twice, but he does anyway: the vibration of his words as he buries himself face-first in her slickness bringing her to peak. The tightening in her body snaps as she cries out his name. Like everything he’s given her, the orgasm is slow and sweet, cresting and continuing to fall as he fucks her with his hand. Somewhere in between, he buries his face in her shoulder, kissing away the aftershocks that still shudder through her thighs and toes. 

“I’ve never,” she begins, unable to finish the thought. He still hasn’t removed all of his fingers, leaving just one to circle in her wetness as he kisses her with a damp mouth. 

“Will you do that for me, again?” he asks.

“No,” she fights, even as her tongue explores his, and he’s still knuckle-deep inside of her. “I want you inside of me.”

“I want you to show me how you like to be touched,” he purrs into her cheek. 

“ _No_ ,” she says adamantly, writhing against his movements. She’s so overworked a pea under the mattress would have her screaming. Her hands find his belt and she pulls it free before unbuttoning the denim beneath, snaking a hand between layers of fabric to find him. He makes a funny noise as her searching fingers grasp at his briefs, discovering his length and the curvature of it, and the dampness of pre-cum seeping through the cotton.

“I don’t have any condoms,” he gasps out.

“I have an implant.” He’s suddenly unable to finger her in his confusion, absently wiping his hand on his jeans before bringing it up to her head. She relishes every moment of his angular face gentling and changing beneath her touch, her short fingernails teasing the soft swell of his scrotum beneath his underwear.

“Oh,” he says, twisting in the bed to help her remove his clothing. It takes a little bit, but she slides down to help him out of his boots and tug each leg of his pants, revealing more pale skin. When he’s free she settles down between his thighs, returning his work in kind by trailing her mouth over the fabric. 

“I really don’t know how long I’ll last,” he says, embarrassed, even as his body jerks and small sounds issue from his throat.

“Then we both get a second chance.” He’s so disgustingly shy—it makes her melt even further, prompting her to reach up between her legs and circle the over-sensitized nub of skin until it begins to pull at the muscles she’d forgotten even existed. Of course, he’s watching, head bent at an angle off the bed she’s sure he’ll regret later. With one hand she tugs at the waistband of his briefs until he’s free, his twitching cock resting against the immaculate line formed between the muscles of his belly and his thigh.

“Jesus,” she breathes. 

This work requires two hands, and she takes to it by grabbing him and lowering her head to his velvety-smooth skin and brushing her lips _up, up, up_ to the tip. She licks at the exposed skin, catching the underside of the head with her tongue. He’s perfectly salty and smooth as she wraps her lips around the shaft. The barest twinge of terror reaches her mind as she realizes that she can only take half of him in her mouth before he’s hitting the back of her throat, the immediate autonomic response forcing him out. 

“Please, I really don’t know how long I’ll last,” he repeats now that she’s stopped. His fingers ghost across her hair, settling on her face instead. He’s still trying to exit the bed by way of neck and shoulders, and she giggles at the sight of his sweat-streaked, wild expression in the blue light. 

“I waited, too, Ben,” she says while tugging at him, “it’s okay.”

She improvises in licking at the soft, veiny flesh that’s still exposed. When she swallows him again, it’s with a better understanding of what she’s putting inside of her, drawing her mouth down as far as it will go in a rhythm that makes him call out her name in that deep, deep baritone.

“Come for me,” she says, switching to a single hand pumping the hardness of his flesh as she reaches down between her legs, again. He barely looks at what she’s doing, drinking her in with the look of a man who’s been lost in the desert finding a single drop of water. He tries to pull her closer, hands tugging at her nipples, trailing her calves as she shifts on the bed so he can touch her. His fingers move between her closed legs, fighting to touch her before completely losing himself when she slips her own hand down lower between his legs. She’s feather-light in her touch, smoothing through close-cropped hair and pushing at the base of his shaft beneath the skin, all to bring him deeper into her mouth. 

She can tell he doesn’t want to finish—he tells her over and over again, in so many words—but she doesn’t give him the choice as she brings him to completion, her head bobbing back down. The sound of him coming undone is more than enough of a reward. She finally pulls back, allowing him to grasp himself in a more-appropriately-sized grip. When his other hand finds her face she slips his index and middle finger into her mouth, touching herself at her breast and the apex of her thighs. He watches, enraptured, before finally surrendering with her name dying on his lips.

He's completely gone, staring at the ceiling afterwards. Rey traces a line with her fingertip up his balls and his softening cock, reveling in the jerk of his entire body protesting the touch. He strains to kiss her while staying flat on his back to avoid dirtying the linens and she lays down beside him, drawing incomprehensible shapes in the fluid on his torso and marveling at how natural it feels to have all of him to herself.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” he says, peppering her face with small kisses. His dark eyes are wide, lashes closing as she kisses him back, sweetly.

“Same,” she lies.

“You want to stay the night?” Ben asks, voice tremulous as if he’s unsure even after this.

She kisses him deeper in answer, wrapping herself in his body until they’re perfectly combined, enveloped in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben's jukebox playlist, with as much credit as I can give without spoiler alerts (seriously, most of the songs [suggested here](http://ashesforfoxes.tumblr.com/post/174615832881/gimme-sympathy-delay) are making their way into the fic in one way or another). Feel free to let me know if I missed you.
> 
> 1\. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" by The Beatles + [@mistyfdfa](https://blog.mistyffiction.com/)  
> 2\. "Crazy On You" by Heart + this goes to [@blessmycircuits](https://blessmycircuits.tumblr.com/) for guessing in the first chapter that Heart was the analogy for Leia's presence in Jedi  
> 3\. "That’s the Way" by Led Zeppelin + anon, you know who you are  
> 4\. "Easy" by the Commodores + for [@kayurka](https://kayurka.tumblr.com/) I would have used the Sky Ferreira cover, or the Faith No More cover knowing _Angel Dust_ would not be amiss in an AZ small town jukebox, but Ben's a purist  
>  5\. "Orchid" by Black Sabbath  
> \+ [@lunaplath](http://lunaplath.tumblr.com/) suggested the best metal song Ben could  
> 6\. "Sweet Thing" by Van Morrison  
> \+ blame my mom for this one  
> 7\. "Cowgirl In The Sand" by the Byrds + (Ben and the author have a sense of humor)  
> 8\. "Strawberry Letter 23" by Shuggie Otis + my fave jukebox in Portland plays this song, along with an entire Slayer album, enjoy  
> 9\. "Brief Candles" by the Zombies + this album will be important for the fic  
> 10\. "Beginning to See the Light" by The Velvet Underground + and we're back to [@blessmycircuits](https://blessmycircuits.tumblr.com/) with the winner, winner chicken dinner because Ben did, in fact, see the light.  
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
> Just for the record, I don't have a beta for this fic. I have wonderful writing partners, who've graced me in my times of need, but I'm kind of doing this on my own now. It's not a bad thing. My goal in writing this was just to put a story down and see it to its completion. It's already growing in chapters, because I wrote out a lot of headcanons and haven't even dipped my toes into the main plot. I just wanted to let you know so you can't blame anyone else for all the bad grammar and html errors. I'm not a good writer, just a careful one, and I'll still miss. Again, it's by the grace of better writers, and the kindness of strangers, that I keep writing. Thank you for reading.


	6. night music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst, then smut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy this because things are going downhill faster than you can say "shred". Much thanks to my amazing IRL and fandom heroine and friend [@bastila-bae](http://bastila-bae.tumblr.com) for beta-ing, and for everyone who's tolerated my massively delayed effort to get this story back on the road again. We are officially a go.

The conference table is a mile long, gleaming under the decorative lamps so common in this time: blown-glass too thick to let light through, so their small company is wrapped in the ugly, reddish darkness of the long room. Someone’s gone out of their way to put on one of Snoke’s many background choices used in his therapy sessions—a New Age meditative recording of chanting in Sanskrit or some other bullshit. Kylo has heard it so often in the past few months he would smash the shit out of the CD playing it if he could even stand up on his own. 

Instead he’s locked in for the long, ugly ride—from a hospital bed to a rehab facility and then to Supremacy by the Bay, the best treatment First Order Records could buy him and a silent handshake: commit to the lifestyle, and we won’t drop you from _this_ label. Snoke’s ownership in both companies isn’t new, he’d taken over Palpatine’s office upstairs in the 80s, but the man had always been a mystery sealed behind the hermetic, sterile doors of it. Until now. 

“Everyone loves a redemption story,” Snoke says from the far end of the table, surrounded by his leather folders and carefully-stacked papers. At his side is a contingent of nameless assistants, the only notable face among them the ghost-writer, Mitaka. The blue light of his giant laptop shines on his face as he types.

“It’s not a redemption story,” Severin says beside him, folding large hands in front of him. He’s only here as a publicist, as far as the band is concerned, but Kylo needs him in that moment in the same way he’s needed him on stage. “Spin it how you like, it’s just a memoir.”

“They wanted to tell your story for you,” Snoke continues directly to Kylo, unflagging. “It’s only right that you put your own version down.”

“One that paints him as an addict,” Morse says behind his shoulder. Morse hates everything about this conference room; he’s told him multiple times he should just take the money and let them write it for him, and yet here he is. The Knights are staying together despite getting dropped from their lucrative contracts at Temple, despite everything he’d put them through, and it’s a cold comfort that they still appear to be his friends even after all that he’d subjected them to in the past few months. 

“Redemption requires a fall,” Snoke says over Mitaka’s ceaseless tapping. “Reality is a truth people will cling to, and it will keep that fall from ever making sense to the public. They’ll ask why he didn’t just come clean. Why he never advocated for truth in a world that didn’t understand him.” 

“Fuck that,” Morse snarls, moving into view and gesturing at him, at the cast on his arm and the bandages still snaking over every bare inch of Kylo’s skin, including his stitched face. “This isn’t enough for them to care?”

“It never is.” Snoke’s expression is calm but dangerous, his pale stare hooked into the person standing beside the table. The older man takes a drink of water, his half-bald head glinting along with the immaculate glass in his hand. “You fail to see the narrative here, and I can’t blame you. Addiction is something you have a personal sentiment towards, don’t you, _Rhys_?”

Morse cringes at the use of his name, long fingers clenching and distorting a litany of tattoos. He turns back to Kylo, pale hair falling across his forehead as he leans in to whisper with no intention of hiding his words. “Don’t listen to this fucking creep.”

“This man just hired you when you could’ve been blacklisted from ever working in music again,” Severin interrupts, his voice a rumble. “Maybe you should sit this one out.”

“You’re letting them buy your identity,” Morse speaks to Kylo now, eyes hard and all the more green for how bloodshot they are. “This is selling your soul.”

“I know,” he says, finally. The words are just as bitter in his mouth as the Oxy he’d been chewing in the weeks before the accident, replaced by the morphine now released at regular intervals by the pain pump buried in his bicep. They were still calling it an accident; they were writing a book about the accident. His life has been divided into Before the Accident, and After the Accident—B.A. and A.A. 

The irony of it is enough to make him laugh his way back to the hospital and never have to look into the eyes of these strangers again. But he can’t drive, he can barely move. He can’t even breathe without an army to tell him what to do and what to take. And the man who controls all of it is waiting on him, patiently, vulture-claw fingers steepled in front of a thin smile. 

“I want to tell _their_ version of the story,” Kylo begins haltingly. “I want all of them to read and have it be as airtight as they wanted so they can’t argue with it. They worked so hard on their version, may as well.”

Morse concedes, rubbing at his foxish face until it’s crimson. He’d made it out of the whole affair with a slap on the wrist but the press had already had their day in the sun with missives about drug possession, pushing, enablement. Whether or not it was true didn’t really matter. Morse had always looked the part of the bad boy of the group.

“They wanted the world to believe what they told them, and I’ll help them win,” Kylo continues as Esther joins them, pushing a cup of herbal tea in front of him shyly before pulling back a safe distance. Even with the three of them, he feels like he’s facing down the forces of Hell with the way Snoke’s face reveals crooked, nicotine-stained teeth, nodding his liver-spotted head.

“We’ll start with your grandfather,” Snoke says. “We’ll start from the beginning. They know that tale already, and it’s such a good one.” Mitaka glances up to nod before laying the words down, unaffected entirely by whatever he’s being told. 

“Then we talk about Jedi Returns, and Millennium. Your mother and her money, your uncle forcing her out of her cushy lifestyle when their adoptive uncle reunited them. Your con man father, and how he wormed his way into their lives,” Snoke says. “Using their fame to get what he needed: money and status from a legacy he never understood. And of course, the way he used your mother’s guilt and insecurity to hide the family curse.” 

“This is sick,” Morse says as he brushes past Esther to slam the conference room door behind him, Severin’s dark eyes following. Severin stays but his frame is rigid, jaw working beneath the placidity of his umber face. He’s always been the spokesperson, but tonight he’s silent. The gears are turning but he’s not really there, and Kylo knows it probably has something to do with his life’s work practically dissolving overnight. 

“You see, it writes itself,” Snoke says, drinking more water. A little stream dribbles down his chin, and he tamps at it with the same handkerchief he has a habit of coughing into.

“I think you should talk about Padme Amidala.” The quiet voice behind them makes all eight faces left turn towards the wood-paneled wall behind Kylo. Esther is leaning against it, her red hair spilling over her face. “If you want to talk about curses, that’s where you start.”

“Too sentimental.” Snoke shakes his head, speaking to the table and ignoring her. “Her loss will of course be mentioned, but it needs to be in the context of how it broke his grandfather.”

“She’s why Leia kept everything from Ben . . .” Esther trails off, crumbling under the attention and immediately fiddling with the end of her long, gray cardigan. “It’s what people remember.”

“Of course, child. That’s why she didn’t want anyone to talk about his grandfather’s problem. No one wanted to believe that there was anything short of abuse going on for him to murder his wife and almost kill his children. We’ll mention it in passing.”

When Kylo turns back to her she’s already slipping out quietly and Severin stands up to follow, just a glimpse of his perfectly-pressed suit through the door before it clicks shut. He’d expected to be alone, just not so quickly. He should have known better than to ask them for support, but in the haze of medication and numbness it doesn’t matter either way. 

“Women,” Snoke laughs, expecting everyone to join him as he folds his fingers together. “So where do we _really_ begin?”

* * *

Neither of them can sleep afterward, even though they try. Ben holds her from behind, the heat of their bodies melding as he watches each rise and fall of her freckled shoulder. She breathes deeply, her eyelashes fluttering closed to open again after a few minutes. 

“I can hear you thinking, Ben,” she says once she finally turns in bed to look at him, her hand burying in the pillow between them. He feels the loss of her warmth immediately. It’s growing late but the last of the sunlight breaking through the receding clouds slips in through the drapes to reveal her passive face and heavy-lidded eyes.

“What do you know about my family?” He never thought he’d be asking her this naked under the covers, the air conditioner long turned off so that the open windows can pull in a cool breeze carrying the memory of the rain. 

“Not as much as you do, surely.” Rey looks concerned as she tries to suss out what he’s trying to articulate, poorly.

“Do you know what happened to my grandmother?” 

“They said your grandfather . . . that he killed her,” Rey says. The shadows move as her expression changes. “By accident. On the way to the hospital.”

“She was in a coma, she never woke up,” he explains, voice cracking. “My mom and Luke were born by c-section before she finally let go. Her family kept them from Anakin, of course. They were old Hollywood money. Blamed him for everything.”

“Were they wrong?” she asks, incredulously. 

“He loved her.”

“That’s worse,” Rey’s voice fades into nothingness, but her body stiffens beneath his arm draped across her waist. “He was on drugs when she was about to give birth to their children.”

“He was,” Ben says. “Just not the kind he needed.”

She pulls back a little, to look at him, eyes darting to his mouth. Rey always knows when to listen, when to give him space to speak, even when he doesn’t want to. Right now he can sense she doesn’t know what to say.

“He was never diagnosed,” he admits. “That’s not an excuse. Just something I’ve been living with since I was old enough to know what it meant.”

“Diagnosed with what?”

“Schizoaffective disorder.” He’s out of his own body speaking the words aloud for the first time in his entire life. Everyone else has told it to him, deduced or assumed. It should feel like a burden is lifted to say it aloud, but his entire body is numb and pinioned by shame.

“Is that like schizophrenia?” Rey asks.

“The worst parts, yes,” he says. “There’s just delusions. Mood disorders, anxiety.”

“It’s also sometimes hereditary,” he confirms her suspicions, unable to say the words aloud. 

“Oh.” It takes a few moments for her to process. Her face becomes soft with her concern, the small indentation on her cheek from some long-lost scar disappearing under his thumb as he reaches up to touch her face.

Rey’s hand mirrors his own, rubbing his left cheek softly. He’s crying with her, he realizes. It’s a hard stone forming in his throat that threatens to manifest as a sob until she says: “That’s awful. I’m sorry, Ben.”

His skin is hot with mortification, sweat dripping down the places where his limbs are crooked and held in place by fear. He leans into her guiding touch, turning away.

“Why were you afraid to tell me?” she asks. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“No,” he says, “but it’s a death sentence.”

“You’re wrong,” Rey’s voice is gentle as her hand grips his jaw. “You can treat it.”

“Have you ever seen someone have a psychotic break?” he asks.

She shakes her head a little, mouth a hard line. 

“It’s hard to understand,” he says. “It starts like the tiniest seed planted in your mind, and it feels . . . it feels like you’re realizing everything at once, your thoughts becoming the reality around you. But it doesn’t stop. You get paranoid. Delusional. The little fears you have at the back of your mind, the kind you have when you’re a kid wondering if there’s a monster in the closet, or a ghost in the attic? They’re real.” 

“But they’re adult fears: this person hates me, the stranger on the street is considering calling the cops and locking me away for life. I’ll hurt someone, or myself, just by thinking it. The words in a song from fifty years ago are written about you, they’re a coded message.”

The dam broken, the words flood out of him unrestrained. This is what he should have written in his own words in his own life’s story, if he hadn’t been a coward then. He’s still a coward, he thinks. 

“The doctors know you’re broken, and they keep asking questions you can’t answer because you’re distracted by the thought that there’s a camera somewhere in the room. You’re in a movie everyone else is watching and you don’t know your lines.”

Rey’s face goes still, but the crease in between her brows and the slow trickle in the salt tracks on her cheeks are all the encouragement he needs to continue.

“You’re tired but you can’t sleep. Every little noise is from something you know is real and there’s no voice in your head to tell you otherwise, it’s been replaced by a dozen others confirming it. And they’re all different, they’re not yours, even though you recognize them as having been there forever.” He realizes he’s whispering, self-conscious.

“I’m sorry. The last person I told this to . . . it’s been a while.” He waits for her to process, her eyes far-away for a moment, almost seeing through him.

“Isn’t there a way to stop that from happening?” she asks, sincerely.

“Only help,” he says. His soul is pleading for release now, wishing that the conversation could end here, more-so that it could have ended before it had even begun. “Please trust me, I’m not exaggerating. I had my first episode when I was eleven. Then again at thirteen. Seventeen. I lost track after that.”

“God, Ben.” Tears continue down her face, and he interrupts their flow with a thumb, caressing the skin beneath.

“Then the accident happened.”

She nods beneath his touch. It’s not a surprise that she knows about it. He’d never really considered the price of the fame he’d earned until he’d seen the reaction of strangers to the mere sight of his face: pity or scowls—but more often the held laughter of someone in on the joke of a spoiled celebrity getting his much-deserved comeuppance. 

“Were you really drunk . . . or high?” Rey asks after a beat.

He pulls back, the words cutting all the deeper by what he’d laid bare.

“Both,” he says tersely. “But that doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.” Her face is a wall, a shut door, in how little it gives him but it’s not hard to imagine what she’s thinking after how she’s described her parents in memory, the suggestions of her past written in-between her recollections. And he knows exactly how it feels to be abandoned for something ephemeral. He remembers all too well his father passing out on the couch, the condensation dripping down an empty glass while Ben had eagerly told him about his first day in second grade. He’d curled up beside Han’s stretched-out form on the cold leather just to cherish the few moments they had together before he left for another tour or recording project. 

“I wasn’t myself.” The lump in his throat is growing sharper, threatening to kill his voice entirely. He can’t say it, shouldn’t say it, but it’s too late. “It wasn’t the first time I tried ending my life. I can only hope it will be the last.”

He opens his clenched-shut eyes to her reaching out to him again, her hand settling on his bare shoulder.

“I was selfish. I could have killed someone. I got off easy.” He finds himself repeating the same words he’d heard upon waking up that first day—through the haze of a concussion and under the ambient, too-loud noise of hospital bio-monitors. The faces had blurred together. It may have been his mother, his uncle. But he always heard them in his father’s voice.

“No,” Rey sobs, shaking her head side to side, expression unreadable in the encroaching darkness. “No, you didn’t.”

“You were right,” he says after a moment. “I make everything too heavy.”

She laughs unexpectedly, the sound a little hollow but genuine. She wipes her face against her pillow.

“Now you can see why it’s easier just being alone.” 

“You’re not alone.” Her hand tucks into the space between his hair and his ear, drawing out feelings as if she’s spinning thread from the chaos within. “You’re not your past. I don’t care about anything but who you are, right now.”

He’s at a loss for words, as always, so he positions himself over her to kiss her, grateful when she doesn’t pull away or hold herself like iron against his body. She draws him down instead, the leg wrapping around his thigh just as coated with sweat. There’s a hesitation in the reciprocal press of her lips but her hands twine in his hair and keep him there, each concavity and curve of her body finding its fit against his.

Rey lets out a small huff when he finally pulls free to strip the comforter and sheets off, acknowledging the temperature change by laying back and breathing heavily.

There’s no coming up from the sight of her framed beneath him. No trips to museums or hours spent in foreign cities admiring ancient works will ever compare. He revels in each detail: the broken veins at her knees, the shiny lightning streaks on her thighs beneath the tan skin that speak to years of being malnourished and growing too quickly. 

He looks for her scars, and finds them underneath the surface. They’re in her reaction to being touched below the waist, the way her body folds around his head when he kisses her belly. The way she has to work to relax as his mouth finds the crease between her thigh and pelvis. She fights him, but never surrenders to his actions, trying always to pull him up and kiss him even when he’s biting at her thigh. 

“Ben, we should take a shower,” she says, squirming.

“Soon.” He says from between her legs, cherishing the movement of her body beneath his touch. His fingers mimic hers where she’d shown him how to touch herself, mouth and tongue more gentle now as he pleasures her. He wants to tease her, he wants to feel her clench around him.

It works. Ben knows because her legs tense around his shoulders, her feet sliding in the stray bedding beneath them when he circles her entrance with his fingers, not fully entering but curling up just enough to press against the bundle of nerves beneath the textured spot just inside. He looks up to see her hands curled in the pillows as she repeats his name in small gasps. It’s the most beautiful song he’s ever heard.

Fireworks are already exploding inside of him, his cock hard as a nail as he grinds the mattress equally. He’s resolved of a sense of shame at being so eager after subjecting her to the horrors of his life when her arms wrap around his neck and bring him up. When their lips meet again her kiss is as deep as a dreamless sleep, her teeth grazing his lips with each pull of her tongue to taste him and what remains of her sex on his mouth. 

“You can tell me if I’m fucking up,” he says, hiding his expression by touching his forehead with hers. “I’m rusty.”

“You’re perfect,” she murmurs, her hand drawing his cock between them, stroking him in just the right way. “You’re also an idiot for saying that.”

“I know.” He thrusts into her hand, but only so far, mouth moving against hers until her lips open wide. Their noses bump together in their haste to find a comfortable position before they’re kissing again so deeply that time does not exist. 

“ _You’re_ perfect,” he says, holding still when she brings his cock to her, the slick warmth making him groan out loud. 

Rey responds by raising her hips to bring him inside of her, matching him with a cry on her lips. She’s only able to take part of him at their supine angle, but it’s perfect. Her eyes flutter closed and then open again as he finally pushes forward slowly, burying himself by painstaking degrees. It’s almost difficult to fuck her; she’s willing but tight around him, closing in on him once his hips meet hers. They find a common motion, her heat and softness drawing him deeper, making him exhale each time he pulls out slightly. The throbbing ache inside of him is soothed, temporarily, with each thrust.

“More, Ben,” she moans into his neck, and he tries but he’s still slow, as if moving through molasses. She grabs his thighs to pull him down, raising her hips. Deeper, and harder. Rey tells him what feels good as he kisses her neck, her face, gasping each time he bottoms out against her. She moves her hands to his shoulders, stilling the trembling in his arms where they hold his weight up to keep from crushing her. 

The wordless little cries in his ear are his cue that she’s peaking and it fuels the same tightening in his belly, the rush of blood in his ears drowning out everything but her sounds. Then she’s fluttering around him and he doesn’t even have time to react as the next few strokes have him losing control, spasming and coming along with her.

He collapses beside her, pulling her against him so they can stay joined. When he tries to speak Rey closes his mouth with a kiss, the soft draw of her calluses against his temples bringing him back to the moment. She holds him in kindness, in empathy and, he thinks, in love. He can’t tell her he knows that, not with so little time left between them, but he feels it. He’s waited his entire life for it, he has never had anything remotely close to it . . . and nothing this good can ever last. 

He wants to know what she ate for breakfast ten years ago. He wants to hold her hand when she’s in pain. He wants to lay his head in her lap as she reads a book to him with the leaves in the trees above them as their only soundtrack. But he can’t offer a life that will ever resemble normalcy. 

It’s going to be difficult to leave her. She’ll never forgive him. And that will be alright, if it means preserving this moment etched in memory, stained in dusk light and the beating of her pulse against his skin. 

It’s all he has.

* * *

Rey is giddy, unable to think too long or too deeply about the face he’d shown once the mask slipped away—the one that looked like the sad, sensitive kid she’d known was beneath. It had been hard not to find the other signs of a life off the rails: the faint marks in the ditch of his inner arm so familiar to her, the kind that makes her stomach twist. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to think about what he’d told her or shown her, it was just easier to believe that it didn’t matter. Not when this was just an interlude that was ending.

It’s been a common experience in her life—waiting unsatisfied for so long that the desperation to connect and keep what little she’s been given drives her to touch, to kiss any memory of the real world away. But that had been with boys who’d fumbled to find her breasts under her shirt, strangers who didn’t even ask her last name before disappearing in the morning. This is different. This feels real.

They take a shower after waking up and finding themselves practically glued together, freezing from the night air billowing in through the open window. Rey feels herself grinning like an idiot as he insists on cleaning her, rather than himself. 

Everything he does is gentle, caring, and the expression on his face is so different now—protective. The hotel soap barely lathers in the hard water but his huge hands slip across every inch of her skin, settling in her scalp to work in shampoo and bringing up feelings of comfort that make her already-loosened legs threaten to buckle. She rests against the hugeness of his frame as his fingers spiral lower down her spine, working at the muscles at the base of her torso.

When it’s finally her turn she takes her time rubbing the dwindling sliver of soap across the smooth surface of his arms and his chest, giggling at the lack of hair and the way he throws his head back in the water in ecstasy. Then it’s on to his thighs, dipping down on her knees to clean his calves and even his massive feet. Ben flinches when she smooths her hand up between his legs, eventually relaxing when she applies a light touch through the short hair. His balls tighten beneath her fingertips, and she drags her nails barely over the rough skin for good measure.

“Do I make you nervous?” she teases, trying to be sensual despite the constant sputter of water in her face as she looks up at him.

“Always.” His pupils are huge as he looks down on her, a well-defined arm holding himself against the white tile. “Especially when you’re in that position.”

Rey smiles, closing her eyes against the onslaught of the shower to press her face to his enormous thigh, her mouth brushing against his skin. He groans and dunks his head under the water again, fumbling for the shampoo. It drops to the floor and he makes no effort to pick it up as she wraps her mouth around his half-hard cock.

It’s a certain point of pride for her that she can stop him from thinking. His short gasps fill the tiny bathroom, fingers sinking into her hair and caressing her head until it tingles. She loves the way he has to brace himself as her lips and tongue pull him to hardness. When she can no longer fit him in her mouth completely he lifts her up, bending down to wrap his body around hers and kiss her through the shower. 

“Rey. How did I ever find you?” he asks before sucking her lower lip into his mouth. He shelters her from the low-pressure water, his hard length poking into her belly. 

“Just lucky, I guess,” she sighs.

The shower is suddenly even smaller, more constricting. There’s no way on her tiptoes that she’ll be able to ease the burning inside by rubbing against him. The water erases too much of her arousal and makes it difficult to breathe where it pours from his nose onto her face, into her mouth. 

“You want to get out?” he asks, in-between kisses, but she’s already turned the water off and is pulling him into the cold air. 

He lifts her on to the counter by the sink and stands between her legs so he can better dry her hair, making her laugh again when he steals kisses between each swipe over her head. She helps him in turn by toweling him as if she were drying off a dog, caressing the shells of his large ears until they’re red from attention. He’s smiling now, beauty marks standing out against flushed cheeks. She doesn’t even get a chance to finish brushing her teeth—he’s kissing her again on her clavicle, lips hot as he travels south and brings gooseflesh back to her body in the chill environment.

Just when she can’t bear the discomfort of the hard countertop any longer he slides his hands beneath her ass, lifting her body to him to carry her to the room. They don’t make it to the bed. Suddenly he’s pushing her against the wall and adjusting her body so he’s pressed against it, breath hot on her face. His hands find the meat of her thighs to better position them both so that the surface at her back is just leverage, the ugly wallpaper squeaking beneath her shoulders.

“You remembered—” she breathes, cut short by the first thrust inside of her. Ben is thick—almost painfully so, although she’s so ready for him he slips in, deep, spreading her. His cock is bent into that spot that feels so, so good and she tightens around him involuntarily. Whatever he’s held back is gone now as he uses her weight in his hands to bring himself inside to the hilt. 

Rey clutches at his damp hair and then his wide shoulders for balance. It would be an overstatement to say she’s doing any work at all. He’s able to hold her weight as if she were made of air, guiding her up and down and making it seem easy even as his taut forearms shift with each roll of his body into hers. It’s just a matter of holding on for the ride.

A flush unfurls over her skin while she grips his flexing back, losing herself to the pressure of his cock as he fills her and to his tongue and breath hot on her shoulder. Ben is in another state of reality entirely, grunting with each push and biting softly into her flesh. She begs him to come back to her and he does, rising up to explore her lips as she moans approval into his mouth. 

“I want to make you come like this, Rey.”

“Yes, yes—are you sure—”

He kisses her panic away, tongue softly exploring her own before re-hoisting her up into his arms and pumping slowly, deliberately into her. 

It takes her a while to relax with the awkwardness of the position but she focuses on the ache building inside of her. She discovers the way his muscles shift under his freckle-dotted skin, and then his half-lidded, beautiful eyes as he watches her unravel around him. This time the orgasm ratchets up inside of her with each stroke, her legs clenching around his hip bones before she reaches her peak. 

She holds his gentle gaze, repeating his name like a mantra, and it’s a final press of his lips against hers, the kind of kiss like drinking deep from the well of emotion she’s seen on his face, that sends her spiraling over the edge. Each unwinding of the tightness inside of her is met with his hands bringing her closer to hold her body against him. He eases her into a better position, holding her tight. 

She doesn’t know how they make it back to the mattress, but he lays her down gently, lying beside her to caress her face. His mouth is parted, just the hint of a smile on his full lips now. She blushes deeply under the scrutiny as a tear trickles down the side of her face from the flood of oxytocin, her inner voice screaming at her not to cry, not to feel so much. It doesn’t seem to work. 

“You didn’t finish,” she says, glancing down at the length of him pressed between his belly and her thigh, glistening in the low light. Ben kisses the tip of her nose, her forehead.

“I’m not in a hurry.” 

He punctuates the statement by grazing his hand down her breasts, a calloused thumb stroking her nipple until it’s erect. The immediate heat in her belly makes her shudder, the dim fire inside banking as his mouth dips down to take her breast and suck. He takes his time, tongue molding around her nipple. 

Rey keens, nails scratching against his scalp beneath the thick strands of his wet hair, writhing against the hot length brushing against her leg. She takes him in one hand as he tongues every inch of her breasts, teeth indenting the soft meat but never pressing in. He pulls away from her fumbling grasp to trail wet kisses down her belly, brushing his lips against the oversensitized spot before his tongue is on her again, gliding between her folds.

She gasps for air as he’s attentive to her in a way no man ever has been, teasing and licking his way up and down her sex. He finally caves to her whispered plea to be inside of her again, fingertips easing in so that she has something to clench around. He’s relentless, grazing against her labia with his teeth as he laps at every spot but the one she needs. When she’s limp and soaked with sweat he returns to her, damp fingers pressing to her throat to angle her head and kiss her, letting her open his mouth with her tongue against his satin lips. 

Rey doesn’t break the kiss as she turns against him, relishing the hard planes of his body against hers before he takes her again from behind, one giant hand holding her hips as he rolls his own against her with sounds of rapture. They lay tangled together on their sides, his arm cocked against her body so he can watch her, her leg dangling over his as he fucks her, matching kisses for thrusts. Then his fingers dip between her legs with the grace of someone plucking soft notes on a string, pulling up an ache and a need for release she didn’t know was possible. 

“I want to try coming with you again,” he murmurs between panting breaths, kissing down her neck. “I want to feel it.” 

Rey’s agreement comes out in a string of unintelligible cries, the tension rising inside much slower and smoother this time. She grasps his neck as he whispers endearments in her ear, lips brushing the lobe, things like _you’re so good, come for me baby, you’re so beautiful_. In the daze of feeling him swell and move inside her she thinks she imagines him telling her more: _you’re mine, I need you_. Or maybe it’s just written in his face, illuminated golden by the wedge of light crossing the bed from the bathroom door. 

She comes with her mouth against his rough jaw, telling him over and over again that she’s almost there, his index finger circling her clit until she is. She can’t believe she’s coming and he’s pushing her wider, fucking her until her vision blackens with a soft and rolling orgasm, while he never stops telling her what a good girl she is, or how good she feels. He finally stops, a final curl of heat in her belly as he pulses inside with her, his face buried in the tangled mess of her wet hair.

“I didn’t think it was possible. Another first with you, and a second. And a third?” Rey laughs to keep from crying again, body shaking. She feels like the world has been wrung out of her, that there’s only them; if she were to leave this room the exterior would only be an endless, quiet dark. His breathing is slow and rhythmic and she finds herself matching it, unable to move and enjoying having him still inside of her, holding her tight. 

“Hopefully not the last,” he says into her shoulder, voice breaking. 

“Never.” The word slips out with the tears dampening the sheet beneath her burning cheek. “There’s still some night left.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the title is [a Dio reference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrJB-2CeYd8), Rey has oddball tastes in lovemaking music. 
> 
> This was originally 11k, we'll return with the afterglow and come-down next week, as a last chapter before the end of Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2--where we actually get back to the rock star stuff. 
> 
> Thanks everyone for your patience. I still am struggling with medication and personal issues that made writing this fic again hard in the first place, but at least at this point it's cathartic rather than horrifying.


	7. dolorosa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *see's everyone having a good time, slides chapter across the table, leaves*
> 
> This is a turning point in the story, don't kill me.

He watches her as he snaps the tape into the deck, one arm up against the half-open window as she drives. A jaunty country tune replete with a slide guitar plays out of the Falcon’s dash, one half of the stereo fucked by the dying left-hand speaker. _Of course_ his dad would have this tape—he’s surprised there aren’t multiple copies, falling out of cabinets or tumbling into his lap from the sun visor. 

It’s weird being here, even after hours spent cramped into what had felt like the world’s biggest passenger seat once. The smell has changed over several decades, probably thanks to the fact that Chewie and Lando aren’t hot-boxing in the back.

Watching a smile break out on Rey’s face as she recognizes the album is like seeing the sun come free of the clouds still shadowing the desert after they’d escaped Coronado National Forest—more cactus than trees. It’s a light so bright he can almost feel the heat from it. 

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Neil Young fan,” she says, still focused on the highway. Her eyes are hidden behind his thick black sunglasses; she’d lost hers somewhere along the way and now they shared his, laughing every time they had to pull them from each other’s face. 

“Who isn’t?” Ben replies, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “My uncle drilled this album into me until I started calling him the ‘Emperor of Wyoming’.”

“Didn’t you live with your uncle?” Rey asks, head flicking to look at him. She always perks up when he mentions his family, right before she makes sure not to seem too eager. Ben can’t blame her for being curious; outside of a VH1 special, they may as well have been abstract concepts rather than real, flesh-and-blood people.

“In Montana.” He stretches to try and act cool, although her eyes are back on the road.

“What happened?” She hadn’t missed the defense in his tone—it was impossible to hide it from her. Maybe he’s just sleep-deprived, still feeling the languid high of hours spent with her body and voice against his cheek. They’d finally found a hazy kind of slumber, where he’d woken over and over again to a pleasure-pain in his chest at the reality that he was holding someone after years of sleeping alone.

“He was sponsoring a private Christian school in Bozeman.” Ben’s voice wavers. “Temple Academy. My parents thought it would be helpful for me to get out of the city, away from everything. It was good, for a while.”

“Were you religious?” Her question is free of any humor or judgment, completely genuine.

“You could say that,” he sighs. “My family is Jewish but not practicing—I didn’t have that kind of thing as a kid. I guess I needed something to remind me that I wasn’t alone. Purpose. God made sense at that age.”

He trails off, thinking of yellow hills and moonlight limning the cresting rise of stables, the rhythmic creak of crickets in the dry summer evening.

“At least that’s one voice in your head you want to hear.” 

Rey turns bodily to look over at him, a look of horror on her face until she sees the crooked grin on his face and returns it.

“You were a believer,” Rey shakes her head at the dashboard as the instrumental song fades into Neil’s jaunty tale of “The Loner.”

“Oh, I still am. Devil worship is just part of the image that sells my music,” Ben says, earning him another disbelieving look and laughter when it’s clear he’s joking.

“You weren’t a Christian last night.” Her voice is a little husky when she says it, and it sends a thrill up his spine. She changes tack immediately, “what happened when you were seventeen?”

“How . . .” Ben’s flashbacks to the night before abruptly switch from thoughts of the soft curves of her body to telling her about his history, crying. He grimaces at the memory. 

“I don’t know if I can talk about it,” he says flatly. “It was bad.”

Bad is an understatement, but then there’s also the fact that very little of that night remains real to him. The horrified faces of his friends, his scraped, bleeding knuckles, the _thunk_ of a shotgun barrel snapping into place. What he did remember, after, was the beginning of a nightmare that he would never stop dreaming of: the smell of bleach, doors locked from the outside. A deep vibration starts in his shoulders, and he fights to keep the terror from finding the surface of his body.

“You don’t have to talk about it if it makes you uncomfortable.” Rey’s hand snakes across the center console to find his palm. Those strong, tan fingers are swallowed by a hand that doesn’t feel like his own, squeezing tight as she hums to the music. They talk about other things—moving on to _less heavy_. That’s the place he knows best when he’s not with her, apparently. 

She tells him about growing up across the Atlantic, about her grandmother—a woman with a penchant for Canadian whiskey and fine clothes, whose sudden death had left her adrift in a heartless foster system. Rey skips over that experience, focusing on her time in the music shop where crusty old men had traded her tales of glory days in pubs in Liverpool for repairs on their ancient instruments. 

Ben supplements their conversation with tales of his last trip to Europe, when Vader had been less of a well-oiled machine and they’d suffered through a series of travel mishaps including Phasma disappearing in Prague and their tour bus breaking down in West Ireland.

But none of it curbs the anxiety which wakes up in his bones, the kind that makes him want to break something just to release it. The only thing in arm’s reach is the set of fuzzy gold dice hanging from the rearview mirror so faded they’re almost beige. They’ve made it to Tucson and the sun is already at its zenith—peeking through wisps of _stratus_. He reads each exit marker in his head, sure they’re at the one that will take them to her home. They pass on by into yet another stretch of desert, and the white box houses scattered across the desert plain disappear behind them as she keeps driving.

“If you lived here, you’d be home by now.” Ben reads the sign over the apartments near the freeway, his hands twisting together.

“If I take you home now, Rose will want to know what happened. I think she can smell fear,” Rey jokes, flipping the tape to its b-side. “I don’t have to work until six. Indulge me.”

“You can kidnap me whenever you like,” he murmurs for the second time in his life. He knows she can hear it by the shy smile that creeps onto her face, revving the old beast to send them down the blacktop and closer to their next, secret destination.

* * *

“A church.”. 

“A historic site, Ben. I told you I’d show you the pretty parts of—what did you call it—this ‘hellhole’.”

If she could look hard enough, Rey thinks she could see the neon-bright green of new life emerging from the cracked earth around her. It was always like this after the rain: within a few days the desert would be blooming with colors usually dormant beneath the desaturated reds of stone and sand.

The mission blends in with the landscape, a blinding white stucco against blue sky. She loves how he seems to hesitate at entering when they get out of the Falcon, his teeth gritting as he blinks against the light. She has to capture his arm to drag him in as if he were a vampire who would immolate the first time his foot touched the sacred soil beyond the massive, ornate entrance.

“I guess I deserve this,” Ben jokes.

“Come on, let’s cleanse your soul before you have to go back to LA,” she says.

He trails behind her, a tentative, black shadow, as they enter the narrow building. The inside is illuminated by a thousand candles, and the gold and blue and red of such a rich iconography that it had taken her years to decipher the shapes and patterns of it. From a distance it seems planned but upon closer inspection the frescos on the walls are distinguishable as being from different times, different artists. Each is perfect in the way they join seamlessly with the other.

They are surrounded by icons and angels, heavenly bodies sculpted and painted into the walls with such care that heaven seems closer. The intake of his breath at the sight sends a feeling down through her breastbone like she’s catching the same fire he’s felt, experiencing it for the first time. She’s been here so many times she’s memorized the guidebook; San Xavier Del Bac, the White Dove of the Desert, has always reminded her of her home across the globe—built when this was New Spain, on lands that still belonged to the Tohono O’odham people. Like it, she’s just a transplant. A foreign object sitting, waiting, in the middle of the desert. 

He bows his head down to her as she whispers to him, and they stay to the side of the narrow nave rather than bother those sitting quietly in the pews. Blessedly it’s a Tuesday so the usual throngs of visitors and tourists are gone, leaving them to admire the vault and decor in peace.

“I could never get tired of it,” she whispers, the respect in her voice unforced. “I could live here.”

“You’d be a terrible nun,” he whispers back. Ben’s hand rises to cup her shoulder, fingers gentle against the thin sleeve of her dress. She resists the urge to lean too far into it, taking him to the three-winged transept where the altars stand beneath the figures of saints. To the east, the benches beneath the blue silk-costumed statue of Our Lady of Sorrows with her jewel-toned surroundings are empty except for the rows upon rows of candles flickering on their stands. Lying at the altar beneath the Virgin’s feet are hundreds of tiny metal ornaments, a few adorned with loops of red ribbon and thread.

“They’re _milagros_ ,” she says, seeing his quizzical expression. “Prayers for the thing they look like.”

“Hearts for love?”

“Or a heart condition. Dogs for loyalty, legs for travel,” she rambles, the blood flaring in her face as she tries not to think too much about what had caught his eye. 

“I always thought she looked like the painting your mom has in her living room of your grandmother.” Rey staves off insecurity to reach for his hand. He doesn’t seem to notice, and she pulls it back. “The one with stars in her hair?”

“Flowers,” Ben corrects, immediately gripping her shoulder tighter. “I like stars more, though.” 

A candle sputters. She tries not to think about the faded album sleeve she’d first seen that picture inside of surrounded with incomprehensible liner notes, it’s cover just a dark-eyed man’s face bisected with a wild charcoal sketch of some kind of robot. 

“What would you say to her, if she were still here?” Rey asks.

He’s frozen for a while, not looking anywhere but at the figure, before he answers.

“I’d ask her if she’d found peace.” He ducks his head. “I’d ask if after everything . . . she forgave him.” 

“I think she did,” Rey says quietly.

The silence that follows weighs heavy until his phone buzzes loudly, repeatedly, and he scrambles to turn it off.

“I have to take this,” he apologizes, giving her forehead a peck as he rushes back outside to leave her in the space. As familiar as it is, it feels emptier without his hand on her arm, his lips on her forehead. Blue Mary, with her upturned face and golden crown, blurs into streaks of color as she bites her lip and remembers the reassurances she’d told herself upon waking up, all of them seemingly lost like dust on the road behind them. 

_What did you do to my life?_

The tears are long gone when she finds him outside, hunched to the phone against his ear, with annoyance writ large in his low voice. Whatever bad news he’s hearing it’s not something she wants to hear, so she finds the gift shop to wait it out. The call takes long enough that by the time he paces into the hallway, searching for her, she’s sitting on a bench peering into the little brown paper bag with her wares. 

“At least I have a plane ticket, but I don’t leave until midnight,” he sighs, sitting down beside her. “What’s that?”

“It’s nothing.” Rey flushes. It hadn’t been hard to find what she wanted to buy for him, but she has to find her courage to pass him the gift. 

“Holy water, huh?” His eyes crinkle, humored, as he pulls out the plastic bottle. 

“That’s to use on Hux,” she explains, motioning for him to continue. “And that’s for you.”

“Saint Cecilia: patroness of musicians,” Ben reads from the back of the card holding the small silver medallion. “I would have thought you would have gotten me a milagro to pray for my dumb ass.”

“There’s no fixing that,” she jokes. “Besides, your ass is fine.”

“I recall you saying I didn’t have one.” An involuntary guffaw comes out of her, startling a small group of college kids with a well-intentioned tour guide in the sanctuary.

“You make up for it in so many other places,” she says, maybe a little too seriously. He chews at his pink lower lip, eyes traveling up her body to meet hers. Ben’s gaze is not as laughing as she expects; he looks almost tormented.

“I wish we had more time,” he breathes.

“Me too.” Rey is drawn magnetically towards his mouth, consumed with the need to forget that this is it. He leans in, lashes lowering. 

“Excuse me, so sorry,” someone says, breaking the spell with a clearing of their throat. They both swivel away from each other towards the voice, the bag in Ben’s hands crumpling. There’s a young man with a green polo t-shirt and a nametag, his tanned face red. “You’re Kylo Ren, right?”

The stranger holds out a postcard and a pen, the card jittering. Ben gives her a furtive glance: _save me_. She smiles brightly, nodding.

“Sure. Yes.” In an instant he’s a different person entirely, spine ramrod straight as he takes the offering and asks the stranger his name. Rey pretends to be occupied by the cracked surface of her phone. She sneaks a look at his slanting, elegant hand—”Rock on, Kaz”—suppressing a giggle as they’re surrounded by a small flock of younger people, asking questions, shaking his hand.

“We were at the show,” one of the girls says breathlessly, handing Rey her phone with the implicit request that she take their picture.

“Oh really. Did you like it?” His voice is even different, deeper and hidden. Rey feels a shiver crawl down her body at that tone, so contrary to the bashful, wry person she’s come to know. His default mode is a half-smile and a dangerous look, one she tries to pretend is just for the screen she’s holding between them. 

She humors the girls in their University of Arizona t-shirts, snapping a few of their feet for good measure as she moves back far enough to get his tall body into the frame. All of the captured images reveal the flushed, awed faces she might have once had for someone like him, before. It takes a few minutes for Kylo Ren to be extricated from his fans, and then they’re left in a wake of tittering and shared enthusiasm.

“Back to reality,” he says once the crowd is out of earshot, running a hand through his hair and donning his sunglasses. 

“Indeed,” Rey says, retrieving her gifts from the bench, clutching them to her chest. “Ready to go home, Ben Solo?”

* * *

The house is silent in answer when she calls out “hullo,” the afternoon sun gold through the blinds. Ben closes the door and locks it behind them, feeling safe for the moment. 

“I guess they’re all at work alre—”

Rey’s words are cut off by the crush of his kiss. He can still taste the lime on her tongue from their drive-through Mexican dinner, and she’s reluctant to open her mouth until he’s jammed her against the wall just inside. Rey falls apart beneath his kisses, moaning as he works to pull her hair free of its constant messy bun. She half-heartedly pushes him away, drawn back to his lips with each nudge of his face against hers. He presses a knee between her legs, letting her grind against his dirty jeans until she’s gasping for breath. 

“I only have an hour or so,” she says when they come apart finally.

“You don’t need all of it. I’ve seen you get ready,” he says, brushing his lips across her closed eyelids. “Shower?” 

“If I take a shower with you they’ll never see either of us again,” Rey murmurs dangerously, fingers drifting down the thick stubble on his cheek. “It’s a staff meeting, I should at least cover these.” 

She tilts her head to reveal the yellow-tinged, purple marks he’d left there that morning. They’d explored each other with the urgency of their approaching check-out from the hotel, and he’d found himself channeling a lifetime of pent-up desire, the kind that’s spilling out now. He soothes the tender skin on her neck with his tongue.

“Ben,” she breathes into his collar.

“Alright. I’ll be good,” he breaks away, kissing the tip of her nose for good measure. 

“Not too good, I hope?” She’s already undressing as she goes down the hallway, and the sight of her powerful back and the fox-shaped tattoo on her right shoulder makes the blood thrumming in his body pool even further in his aching groin. He assuages it by following her to the back of the house, setting their bags on her still-unmade bed and collapsing in the same spot when he’d been much less sober.

“You know what,” Rey says, stripping further by pulling down her leggings. “You should come with me tonight.”

Ben’s mind is already gone at the sight of her perfect breasts, but her words bring him into the present moment. “What?”

“You should come to Resist.” She cocks her head, smirking at his expression. “At least just to check out that security footage.”

“I’d forgotten.” He clears his throat. “I’m sure Ed’s on it.”

The sly look on her face falters, and she stops at removing her underwear, holding his eyes with hers.

“Think about it,” she says, the casualness in her tone lost in the absence of his answer. “You have time to kill. Maz could make you a pre-flight cocktail at least, maybe tell you one of her famous stories.”

“Maz Kanata?” He finds himself laughing past the chill rising in his body. “Can’t believe that old bat is still around.”

“Respect your elders.” She throws her leggings in his face, turning to grab clothing haphazardly from her open closet. “She knew your grandfather, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” The memory of Maz’s stories is impossible to forget with that sky blue Stratocaster resting in its stand just by her computer desk, all the scratches in its veneer a reminder of their shared history. “Does she still talk about trying to marry Chewie so he could get citizenship when he was already married?”

“What?” Rey scoffs. “No, but I bet your mom can fill me in.”

His silence stops her after a few moments of tossing hangers on the floor along with their unworthy offerings. She turns, clutching a long, blue dress to cover herself.

“Will she be there?” His voice cracks, unable to look at anything but his hands gripping his thighs. 

Rey is suddenly before him, bare and cupping his face between her hands. “Yes. You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to.”

He can’t find the words to answer, heart beating faster as she stands between his legs and looks down on him. Her pupils are small in the amber light, her brow furrowed as she waits for a response he can’t seem to give her. 

“I want to see her.” The words come out of him, mechanically. “I just . . . I just don’t know if I have the strength to do it right now.”

She kisses his forehead, her sigh warm against his skin. 

“I’ll be there for you. No pressure, Ben. But you should.” Her lips trail down the arch of his nose, finding his closed mouth, and he can’t help but kiss her back, all the fear and affection her words had held flowing into him. 

“Let me think about it.” He blinks back the sudden rush of emotion. “You should get ready.”

“Like I said, no pressure,” she repeats, leaving him. “I’m just happy I can tell her I saw you smile.”

There’s a flicker of her white teeth and her freckled skin, and then she’s gone. The sound of the water running in the bathroom is his cue to pull his phone from his pocket, thumb pressing down hard on the home button. 

A drop of moisture splatters across the screen as he presses on the black square, her address already saved from when he’d made the fateful decision to follow her through the night, deep into enemy territory. Somewhere in that time, he’d lost the discomfort of being somewhere he shouldn’t be. The feeling returns from quiescence like an atomic bomb detonating, the roaring in his ears overtaking Rey’s voice echoing in from the bathroom. 

There’s a record player at his eye level when he stands up, and he’d spent enough time flipping through her collection beneath to know that The Byrd’s _Younger Than Yesterday_ is somewhere on the right side—organized with the semblance of alphabetical order by album name rather than the artist. He lays down the stylus and turns the knob up on her stereo, amplifying the _la, la, la_ as the artificial recording of screaming fans filling the room.

_So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star?_  
_Then listen now to what I say_  
_Just get an electric guitar_  
_Then take some time and learn how to play_

Rey joins in on the harmonies led by David Crosby from down the hallway, interrupted by the sound of a shower curtain being pulled back.He uncaps the pen he’s pulled from the coffee mug next to her laptop, finding a blank page in her dog-eared notebook, trying not to look too closely at her scrawled tabs. 

All the words that had seemed so quick to flow last night have turned to ash. He tries to remember the same beads of moisture forming on her eyelashes, her assurances that the past didn’t matter. What can he say to her that he hadn’t already said?

_Thank you for the time we spent together—_

He immediately rips out the page, starting again, making it farther until he’s at _this weekend changed my life. Call me XXX-XXXX._

Rip, tear, then it’s in the trash. Five pages later the notebook’s spine lies straight with its inner spine torn out. 

_Thank you for changing my life. I will never forget you. I will think of you every time I wake up, every time I go to sleep. I barely know you but I—_

The ink smears across the lined page, everything he’s wanted to say lost in the beauty of hearing her singing in the other room. 

_“Run by, don't turn back_  
_Can't hide from the look in her eye . . .”_

Slowly, wretchedly, he tears the page free and crumples it in his hand. 

* * *

Rey does her makeup, misremembering half the lyrics she’s humming along to and laughing instead. She’s spent the last half-hour suppressing the urge to beckon him in, the thought of him stepping awkwardly into the raised tub to hold her against his bare chest playing on a loop in her fantasy. 

Elation takes her over with each half-formed idea of finding him stretched out on her bed, waiting for her to draw her towel down so he can eat her up with those deep, dark eyes. She’s painted her lips red with the tube of lipstick Paige had passed down to her almost a year ago—the one she’d hidden away and forgotten about because she’d never had anyone to wear it for. 

She gives herself one last pass in the mirror to make sure her bruises are covered, and her eyes are sufficiently darkened, fighting with her hair. It’s obvious he prefers it down and loose for how much he reaches for it. She wants him to twine it in his fingers again, to smooth it down for her. She turns off the hairdryer, finding the music is quieter now, barely perceptible over the drip of the faucet.

“Ben?” She opens the door, gripping her towel, flicking the light and fan off.

“Ben?” Her voice fades to a whisper as she peers down the dim hallway, looking for his shadow past her open bedroom door. 

The album playing is the same but everything has changed, the carpet shifting under her feet the moment she realizes her room is empty and his bag is gone, a small black folder in its place. One-half of the cardstock waves in the breeze from the fan sitting on her nightstand, offering a glimpse of a sepia-toned image of them in another time and place—one that never existed. 

She won’t chase him outside this time. She can’t. He’s not going to be right outside the door, just as surely as her parents’ RV will never pull into her driveway. The song he’d left her with winds down, the scratches and dirt on the record translating into so much static breaking up the melancholy guitars. 

_I know that door_  
_That shuts just before_  
_You get to the dream you see_

There’s no crunch on the gravel of a car already gone, no latch of a door opening. There’s just his silhouette in her mind’s eye, stark against the particle-board houses rotting past an empty cul-de-sac. His back is turned to her, waiting for his exit towards a better place to be.

_I know all too well_  
_How to turn, how to run_  
_How to hide behind a bitter wall of blue_

The record plays out, leaving just the mechanical thump of spinning with no sound, the needle hitting a single scratch over and over again. 

“Ben,” she says, again, in a voice that’s very far away. 

Rey listens for nothing, and she finds it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [San Xavier Del Bac](http://www.sanxaviermission.org/) is one of my favorite places in the world. 
> 
> Songs are from Neil Young's self-titled album (["The Loner"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H315jc_iHcI) is about Ben, of course) and The Byrd's Younger Than Yesterday. I had the lyrics for ["Everybody's Been Burned](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Uh8933Jvs) saved in this chapter draft for 5 months. Incidentally, I found the song ["She" by Goon](https://gooon.bandcamp.com/track/she) and listened to it on repeat for about 5 hours straight in support of a new favorite artist.
> 
> Things will speed up after this, I promise. I'm justifying all of this slow-mo relationship in one weekend angst as the necessary fuel for a cathartic trip forward into Rey's stardom.

**Author's Note:**

> Title of the fic is from [Metric's "Gimme Sympathy"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq3-wZs64n4), which references The Rolling Stone's "Gimme Shelter" and "Sympathy for the Devil". Guess who Rey's favorite band is . . . ?
> 
> Current indie sountrack can be found on Spotify [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/126963742/playlist/34auedw2VjObwsNFN8m5Ce). I keep adding to it daily and also take inspo, so feel free to send me your favorite songs or rock and roll headcanons in the comments, or hit me up on [tumblr](http://cyborgharpy.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/ashesforfoxes?lang=en). Thank you so much for your support for my shitty semi-autobiographical work about desert life, classic rock, and isolation.


End file.
